Clear Water, Hidden Danger

Chapter 52– The Western Grocery Sweep

The smell inside wasn’t gone, but the forty-five minutes of airflow had beaten it down to something we could survive. Not pleasant. Just survivable.

Jackson stepped in first this time, rifle angled high. Bilew-Jackson mirrored him on the opposite side. Hawk slid in behind them, and I locked myself dead center of the formation.

Thirty feet.
That was the rule.
They stayed in that bubble or they didn’t go in at all.

“Left side first,” I said. “No drifting. No splitting.”

Everyone nodded.

The pharmacy sat tucked into the far corner. The shelves were mostly intact, though the glass partition had a long pressure crack running through it like a stress fracture. Jackson kept the counter covered while Bilew-Jackson hopped the swing gate and checked behind the storage wall.

“All clear,” she said. “Nothing breathing.”

We rotated out together, moving into the aisle packed with dog food, cat litter, paper towels, garbage bags, cleaning supplies. The smell from the earlier freezer incident lingered faintly, a reminder of why we weren’t rushing.

Hawk shook his head. “This place died loud.”

“Stay tight,” I said.

We swept the entire left block one row at a time. No movement. No shadows where they didn’t belong. When we reached the frozen section, the busted freezer was still there, puddled and cracked. But airflow had done enough to make it tolerable.

Hawk prodded the freezer door with the barrel of his rifle. “Whatever crawled out of here already left town.”

“Focus,” Jackson muttered.

We hit the central food aisles next. Long rows. Clean lines of sight from one end to the other. I paced the middle lane while the team peeled down the adjacent aisles, each one no more than twenty or twenty-five feet from me.

Every time someone moved too close to the edge of the bubble, I stepped to re-center them.
Not optional.
Not negotiable.

The third aisle had a collapsed shelf halfway down. Probably pushed over during the first panic wave. Hawk stepped toward it, then froze.

He lifted a hand.

We all stopped.

He leaned down slowly, grabbed something, and held it up.

An unopened can of peaches.

He made a face. “Man… people really did forget the important stuff.”

Even Jackson’s glare wasn’t enough to keep him from pocketing it.

The right flank came next — wine and beer first. A few bottles had exploded on the floor from heat and pressure, leaving sticky residue that clung to our boots. Beyond that, the special breads and pastry section stood untouched, like civilization had just paused mid-bite.

“Eyes open,” I said. “Back corner’s a blind triangle.”

Bilew-Jackson swept right. Jackson covered above the shelving. Hawk angled low. The rhythm held perfectly — methodical, no wasted movement, no unnecessary noise.

Nothing.

We pivoted toward produce.

The fruits and veggie displays sat wilted but intact. Plastic misting lines hung limp overhead. A few collapsed cardboard crates suggested rodents had visited early after the fall of the grid, but nothing alive lingered now.

We reached the front right quadrant.

“Last section,” I said. “Checkouts.”

We approached the human checkout line first. Belts coated in dust. Cash drawers hanging half-open. Receipts stuck to the floor where spilled soda had dried into glue.

Self-checkout was worse. One machine had fallen over sideways, screen smashed. Hawk nudged it with his boot and shrugged.

“Looks clear.”

We fanned out in a tight semi-circle, maintaining the radius, scanning the last angles that could hide anything at all.

Then I keyed my radio.

“Front half clear. Repeat, front half is clear. Beginning transition to warehouse area.”

The building exhaled through the open bay behind us. My resonance hummed faintly, steady and even, the air in the aisles settling in the way it always did when nothing hostile was near.

We hadn’t found anything yet.

But the warehouse was next.

And that was where problems usually liked to wait.