Page 12 of What Remains

“Mommy, that man looks⁠—”

“Don’t look, baby. Seat belt.”

Josie buckled Layla in with shaking hands and immediately dialed her friend Tessa at the hospital.

The call connected on the second ring.

What answered barely sounded like Tessa at all.

“Jo…sie…”

A cough. Wet. Rattling.

“You need—you need to get home. Don’t come back in. I mean it.”

“Tess, what’s happening? How many cases⁠—”

Another choking burst of coughing tore through the line. Then, ragged and urgent⁠—

“It’s not flu. It’s not—just get home. Now.”

The call dropped.

The sirens barely registered over the blood rushing through Josie’s ears.

She had two choices.

Go straight home, lock the doors, and pray they had enough to get through this .

Or face the chaos to buy them one more day. Her medical training screamed a hard truth: without supplies, home wasn’t a fortress, just a trap. It was a terrible choice, a gamble with the only thing she had left. She turned toward the grocery store.

Josie yanked the spare medical mask from the emergency kit in her bag and fitted it over Layla’s small face, tying the loops snug behind her ears. Then she wrapped her own nose and mouth with her scarf, silently cursing herself for leaving her full gear at the hospital.

Inside, people shouted, grabbed, and shoved past one another without apology. A woman wept openly in the middle of an aisle, clutching a bag of rice to her chest like a prayer. The shelves had already been stripped bare of water and cleaning supplies, entire sections reduced to scattered debris.

“Stay close,” she whispered, gripping Layla’s hand hard enough to hurt them both.

They moved fast, methodically, the familiar adrenaline of the ER shoving her fear aside.

Canned food. Crackers. Bottled juice. Protein bars. Cold medicine. Batteries. Matches. Painkillers. Whatever water remained.

Every few aisles, someone collapsed. Someone screamed. Someone fought over a cart.

But the worst part had nothing to do with any of that—it came from the creeping recognition settling over her, colder than any fear she’d known:

This wasn’t a panic beginning.

This was a panic already fully in progress.

After nearly tipping the overloaded cart, Josie sprinted with Layla toward the checkout. Behind them, someone crashed through an entire display of cereal boxes. Up front, the cashier stood frozen, staring at the flickering news broadcast mounted overhead—eyes wide, hands motionless over the register—while the anchor’s voice shook through the store’s speakers:

“This is not the flu. Stay in your homes. Do not go to work. Do not go to public spaces. Do not⁠—”

The screen cut to black.

“Mommy?” Layla whispered from behind her mask. “What’s happening?”

Josie forced a smile her daughter couldn’t see and wouldn’t have believed anyway.