Page 67 of One Adult, Please

"I wouldn't count on this as a primary strategy," Grant says. "It worked in the pavilion because the infected was already partially pinned. It doesn't stop them immediately."

"So the sleepy stick has a loading screen."

"These aren't designed for this application," Grant says, unholstering. "We can't count on how it affects someone who's already..."

"Dead," Beck says.

"Neurologically compromised," Grant says, because his veterinary brain can't categorize mobile organisms as dead and I respect that even though those organisms are definitely dead.

"Let's find out," I say.

Joel opens the kitchen entrance. Beck hits the main door at the same time. They move into the dark restaurant from both sides and I hear the immediate sounds of engagement. Beck's axe, Joel's wrench, the wet impacts that I've trained myself not to visualize.

One comes through the kitchen door. Toward me and Grant. A big one, formerly a cook based on the stained kitchen whites.

Grant raises the sleepy stick, aims, and fires.

The dart hits the cook in the shoulder. The cook keeps coming.

"It's still coming, Grant."

"The sedative needs time to get in the system."

"It's five feet away."

"The pharmacokinetics are different in compromised tissue, the uptake rate is…"

"Grant, I don't want to die during a vocabulary word." I swing the friendship paddle.

The oar connects with the cook's chest. It stops the forward momentum, pushes the cook back two steps, gives Grant's pharmacokinetics another few seconds to do their pharma-whatever.

The cook takes another step. The jaw is still going but the legs are negotiating with the sedative and the sedative is winning. The cook sways. Leans. Sways more. One knee buckles. The other follows. The cook sinks to the tile, first kneeling, then sitting, then slumping sideways with the gentle finality of a person falling asleep on a bus and missing their stop.

Nap Chef is finally down. Grant moves past me with the knife, and I look at the ketchup bottles because ketchup bottles are my emotional support object now.

The kitchen door swings. Another cook comes through. Then another. Because of course Sunrise Grill has a staff meeting now.

"Joel," I say.

"I'm coming."

"That's a great future event, but I'm experiencing a present issue."

There's a rolling tray cart beside the kitchen entrance. Stainless steel. Three shelves. Loaded with ketchup bottles, napkin dispensers, and the sad little plastic cups restaurants use for ranch.

"Cart," I say.

We push it.

The cart slams into the doorway and wedges between the frame and the first wrong person's knees. Ketchup bottles explode.

Joel appears behind the second cook, inside the kitchen, wrench up, breath tight, shirt smeared with something I'm not looking at. He's driving them toward us, which is helpful in theory and deeply unpopular in practice. "Move," he says.

I move because Joel's voice has found a command setting.

He grabs the kitchen door from the inside and yanks it toward the frame while Grant and I shove the cart from the outside. The first cook hits the cart. The second gets caught between the door and the jamb, teeth snapping through the narrowing gap.

The door doesn't close.