Nathan lay on the ground another few moments after he knew the creature was dead. â€œHow the fuck....â€ he muttered and trailed off<span style="font-style: italic">....did it get in here?</span>The door was closed.<span style="font-style: italic">No, you know they can open doors. Closing them is no harder.</span>Or the storm could have blown it closed.<span style="font-style: italic">Should have been more careful.</span>The smell was finally reaching him too. The store had never smelled this bad.<span style="font-style: italic">Should have noticed. And they're never polite enough to dry off, it would have left a water trail.</span>Sure enough, the boy's moving flashlight reflected back in pools of water all over the room, far from the path Nathan used after going to the gas station. He made a mental note that his next hideout would have easily knocked over objects near the paths. Things he wouldn't miss if he was in a coma.<span style="font-style: italic">And what's the point of the bookcases if you don't push them back into place?</span>But why had he been so careless? It was his guests, obviously. They threw him off his game. Instead of watching for the signs he should have and<span style="font-style: italic">would</span>have caught, he was too busy playing the confident Dungeon Master; trying to make them see some fool who mistakenly thought he was in control.<span style="font-style: italic">Well, you played that part fairly well, at least.</span><br/><br/>It occurred to him that the girl had asked him a question, and he snapped himself back to the real world. This wasn't the best time to be listening to his internal stream of personal self-ridicule, anyways. â€œHuh? Oh....I don't know...â€ His shoulder had slipped his mind. He pushed himself to his knees and grabbed his shotgun from the shelf, then rested the butt on the floor (the safety was still on) so he could point the flashlight at his shoulder without dismounting it. The whole arm was soaked with blood, but the five gashes were still plainly visible as dark shapes under the red.<br/><br/>The boy's gun was back up in an instant. â€œWoah! Put that thing down you crazy son--â€ Nathan caught himself a little too late that time and tried to fix it with reason spoken in the most reasonable voice he could manage with a gun pointed at him. â€œ--there has to be fluid transfer. Here,â€ ever so slowly, Nathan turned the shotgun so the light would shine on the zombie's hand, making sure it never swung anywhere near the other two people in the room, and then slid over to the hand himself. â€œsee?â€ He pulled its sleeve back and turned the hand over a few times in the light. â€œNo open wounds. A perfectly clean, dead, hand. I'm fine.â€<span style="font-style: italic">Thank God. What were you going to do if it wasn't clean?</span>â€œNow, please, can we put that away? I could really use a first-aid kit. And not the hot, lead-based kind.â€