By Michael Anthony
Read by Dani Cutler
She clutched the bag to her chest, felt the contents poking against her breasts through the plastic. She had been fortunate to find it, hidden in a hollowed-out cabinet in a back room. The rest of the store had long since been plundered. She swallowed a ball of spit and crawled along the tile, worming toward the back.
She heard yelling outside, the boys backtracking. She crawled faster, her knees scraping against broken glass. If they caught her they might not kill her, but they’d do nasty things to her. The gangs had found her sister once and had given her the Big Belly. A little monster had squeezed out from between her legs, wiggling and twitching for a few moments before going limp. She remembered burying it, shuddering. The next day she had buried her sister–
“Someone’s here!”
