Chapter 4: The Gospel Across the Highway

The snow on the mall roof had gone pink under the dawn that wasn’t a dawn.

The sky had kept the same bruised, infected color since Integration—a red-gray smear like flesh under dirty gauze—and the light that filtered through the skylights made every surface inside the second-floor security office look sick. Eli stood over the map table they’d made out of an old promotional folding table and a laminated emergency evacuation diagram, one hand braced on the edge, the other tightening and loosening around the grip of his baton.

Below them, the mall breathed in its sleep.

Generators muttered somewhere near maintenance. Wind worried at the chained glass doors. Farther off, from the dark hollow under the food court, there came that occasional soft metal creak that no one liked to talk about.

“Say it again,” Mara said.

She sat on the desk by the dead monitor bank, shotgun across her lap, one boot tapping. There were bloodstains in the grooves of the sole she hadn’t managed to scrape out. Her hair was tied back with the pink elastic band from some Claire’s accessory pack, and the bright strip of color made her look younger than she was, right up until she smiled. She wasn’t smiling now.

Eli traced the route with a marker cap. “Out the west service corridor. Through loading dock three. Across the lot using the abandoned car line for cover. Then the drainage ditch beside Route 88. Supermarket’s garden center wall looked compromised from the roof access yesterday. We go in there.”

“And come back with antibiotics, insulin, painkillers, whatever’s left on the shelves before the holy rollers inventory us and decide medicine is a sacrament.”

“That’s the plan.”

Mara snorted. “That’s never a plan. That’s the sentence people say before dogs made of knives eat somebody.”

“Helpful,” Trent muttered.

The teenager was trying very hard to hold the crossbow like he hadn’t only learned to use it two days ago. He’d found a quilted hunting jacket in Dick’s Sporting Goods and the oversized bulk of it made him look all elbows and fear. But he’d stopped shaking. Mostly.

“I’m with her,” said Naomi.

She stood near the office door, dark curls stuffed into a knit cap, pharmacy tech badge still clipped to the front of her winter coat as though some part of her believed official identification still meant anything. Maybe it did. In the mall, people listened when she spoke about meds. Competence had become its own rank overnight.

“If they have a functioning pharmacy lockup,” she went on, “we need someone who knows what to look for. Broad-spectrum antibiotics first. Then insulin, albuterol, antiseptics, blood pressure meds if there’s room. We’ve got people on borrowed time already.”

Eli nodded once. “That’s why you’re coming.”

Naomi’s mouth tightened. “I know why I’m coming. I’m saying if your pastor has built himself a kingdom over there, he’ll know exactly what he has.”

At the word pastor, the room shifted.

There were twenty-three people sleeping in shifts inside the mall now, if Eli counted the old man in the mattress store who never answered when spoken to but still breathed. News traveled fast in enclosed spaces. Faster when it was half rumor and half prayer.

The stories about the supermarket across the highway had changed overnight. At first it had been lights in the windows and singing. Then organized sweeps. Then a family banging on the outer loading door at 2 a.m., one kid frostbitten, all of them starving, saying the church people across the road fed you only if you agreed to stay. Saying Pastor Jonah Vance had men with rifles posted in the produce aisles and a list of rules painted on sheets hung from the ceiling. Saying no one there went hungry, and no one there got to leave with supplies unless the pastor blessed it.

Mara hopped off the desk. “How many are we taking?”

“Five total. Me. You. Naomi. Trent. Carl on overwatch from the dock roof.”

“Carl can barely see past his own mustache.”

“Carl put three rounds through a mannequin eye socket at forty yards.”

“Fair.”

Eli looked around at the three of them and knew they were waiting for him to say the real thing, not the route, not the inventory list.

“We’re not going over there to start something,” he said. “We’re going to talk. Trade if we have to. Get in, get out.”

Mara rolled one shoulder. “And if preacher boy decides your face offends God?”

Eli met her eyes. “Then we leave before he gets a chance to sermonize.”

No one laughed.

He understood why. The System had not made anybody superstitious so much as practical in a universe where the impossible was now just policy. People reached for old structures because those were ready-made cages for fear. Uniforms. Family names. Religion. Gangs. Anybody offering rules in a world that had dissolved into blood and red light started collecting followers fast.

That was dangerous enough by itself.

It became worse when the System started paying out for it.

Eli still saw it every time he closed his eyes: the pale blue text from the night before, after they’d cleared the porcelain things out of the food court kiosk lane and dragged two bodies into storage because no one wanted them near where people slept.

Territory Synchronization: Provisional Safe Zone recognized.

Current Warden Influence: 17%

Increase population stability, defend boundaries, and feed attached Core to improve claim integrity.

Warning: Unclaimed neighboring structures may become contested sites.

He hadn’t shown that message to everyone.

He didn’t like how people looked at walls once they understood walls could become treasure.

“One more thing,” he said.

Mara’s expression sharpened. Naomi straightened. Even Trent stopped fiddling with the crossbow string.

“If things feel wrong, we pull back. I don’t care if the shelves are full of miracle drugs and canned peaches. Nobody gets split from the group.”

“You expecting trouble from monsters or from Christians?” Mara asked.

“Yes.”

That got a thin grin out of her at last.

An hour later, they moved through the west service corridor in a file so tight their shoulders nearly brushed the cinderblock walls. The mall behind public sightlines always felt less like a building and more like a body with its skin peeled back—service pipes sweating overhead, concrete damp in the seams, loading signs hanging crooked under flickering emergency strips. Their boots clicked and scuffed. Every sound seemed to run ahead of them.

Eli took point with a fire axe slung across his back and the baton in hand. The weapon had stopped feeling like a rent-a-cop accessory sometime around the first time he cracked a Thrall’s jaw and watched black spit string from its teeth. Now its weight had become part of him.

At dock three, Carl waited in a deer camo coat with a scoped hunting rifle and the thousand-yard stare of a man who had once considered retirement and now found himself defending a shopping complex against apocalypse logic.

“Wind’s bad,” Carl said by way of greeting. His voice was tobacco and gravel. “Open ground’ll be worse. Seen movement near the bus stop shack. Could be frozen corpses. Could be something wearing frozen corpses.”

“That narrows it down,” Mara said.

Carl ignored her and looked at Eli. “Church folks posted watchers on the supermarket roof around first light. Binoculars. No shots fired.”

“You think they saw us?” Naomi asked.

“If they didn’t, I’d worry more.”

They cracked the loading dock door just enough to let winter knife through. The cold hit with an animal’s immediacy—into lungs, under collars, through gloves that had seemed warm indoors. Snow had drifted against the concrete lip outside in dirty ridges. Beyond it spread the west lot: rows of abandoned cars dusted white, shopping carts half buried, light poles dead except for one that glowed faintly red from within like an infected bone.

The highway beyond the lot hissed with blown snow. On the far side sat the supermarket and the attached strip of smaller shops, all low brick and dark windows. Except they weren’t dark anymore.

A cross had been painted in white across the supermarket facade, huge and crude, broad as two garage doors. Bed sheets hung in the windows with scripture in black paint so thick it had run in frozen tears.

REPENT AND REMAIN.

THE WAGES OF CORRUPTION IS HUNGER.

HE SETTETH THE BOUNDS OF THE PEOPLE.

“Subtle,” Mara said.

Eli stepped out first.

The snow squealed under his boots. They moved low between the iced-over sedans, passing a minivan whose rear glass had been punched out from the inside. Frozen blood webbed the child seat. Trent stared too long at that and nearly collided with Naomi.

“Eyes up,” Eli said softly.

They cut toward the drainage ditch. Midway, Carl’s rifle cracked once from the dock roof behind them.

The report punched through the lot and came back in broken echoes. A shape dropped from the bus stop shelter by the road, hit the snow on all fours, and kept moving for three frantic strides before collapsing. Eli caught only pieces—the limbs too long, the winter coat fused into the body, the face all mouth. Thrall. Or what Thralls became if left to marinate in whatever changed them.

Trent whispered, “Jesus.”

“Wrong building,” Mara said.

They reached the ditch and slid into it, boots crunching through cattails sheathed in ice. From down there, with road embankment and parked cars shielding them, the world narrowed to gray snow, dead weeds, and the supermarket wall rising ahead.

As they climbed the far side, Eli saw movement at the roofline.

Men in winter coats. Two with hunting rifles. One with a bright orange knit cap and mirrored ski goggles. They didn’t point the weapons. They watched with the stillness of people under orders.

The garden center chain-link fencing had been cut and rewoven with extension cords, bicycle locks, and lengths of braided electrical cable. A sign on plywood read KNOCK AND WAIT TO BE JUDGED.

Mara looked at it. “I already hate him.”

Eli knocked with the butt of his baton.

Nothing happened for long enough that snow began collecting on his shoulders. Then there was the scrape of something heavy dragged aside. A narrow opening appeared in the garden center doors.

A teenage girl stood there with a revolver in both hands and a silver cross around her throat. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Her eyes were rimmed red from lack of sleep. She kept the gun steady anyway.

“State your purpose,” she said.

“Trade,” Eli replied. “Medicine. Information.”

“How many?”

“Five, counting our overwatch.”

Her gaze flicked over them, lingering on Naomi’s badge, on Trent’s age, on Mara’s shotgun. “Surrender long guns at the door.”

“No,” Eli said.

For an instant the girl’s face threatened to become simply a child’s, scared and uncertain. Then she set her jaw. “Then you wait.”

She closed the gap again.

Mara exhaled steam through her nose. “Very welcoming.”

They waited three minutes by Eli’s count. When the doors opened again, the man framed in the gap looked exactly like the rumors had built him and somehow worse.

Pastor Jonah Vance was in his forties, broad shouldered, beard neatly trimmed despite the end of the world, dark wool coat buttoned to the throat. He wore no visible weapon. That made everybody else carrying one around him more obvious. Behind him stood two men with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire and another with a pistol tucked at his waistband. The pastor’s hair was iron-gray at the temples. His smile was warm enough to belong in a church foyer with coffee urns and stale doughnuts.

His eyes were not warm.

“Friends,” he said. His voice carried without effort, rich and practiced. “You came from the mall.”

“We did,” Eli said.

“Then praise God for neighbors.” Jonah opened the door wider. “Come in out of the cold.”

The supermarket smelled like bleach, canned soup, and too many people trying not to stink.

The produce section had become a dormitory. Pallets and flattened cardboard made sleeping spaces between displays of onions and potatoes. Children sat under hanging signs that still read FRESH SAVINGS! while shelling peanuts into a bucket. Someone had lit devotional candles in the bakery case and the wavering flames painted the frosted cakes with funeral softness.

But it was organized. Damnably organized.

Aisles had been narrowed with shelving to create choke points. Office chairs and sandbags fortified the pharmacy counter. The front registers had been turned into a barricaded checkpoint. A white sheet over customer service listed rules in block letters:

NO THEFT
NO BLASPHEMY
NO UNCLEAN ACTS
NO WASTE
NO ENTRY TO THE BACK HALL WITHOUT BLESSING

Beneath that, in smaller paint:

TO REMAIN IS TO SUBMIT.

People watched Eli’s group as they passed. Some hopeful. Some suspicious. Some with the flat deadened look of those who had traded all decision-making for food and a mattress square.

Naomi’s eyes moved immediately toward the pharmacy. Eli noticed and filed it away.

Jonah led them to the café seating area near the deli, where the bolted-down tables had become a meeting space. On one wall someone had hung a wooden crucifix stolen from somewhere larger than a supermarket. Maybe a church. Maybe a funeral home. Hard to say anymore.

“Coffee?” Jonah asked.

Mara barked a laugh. “You got coffee?”

“We have many blessings.”

“Then yes,” she said. “Obviously.”

One of his people brought paper cups steaming with chicory and something burnt. Mara drank anyway and looked halfway to religious conversion.

Jonah remained standing while the others sat. A small move, but Eli saw how it worked. A shepherd above the flock.

“I know who you are,” Jonah said. “Eli Mercer. Security.”

“Used to be.”

“The old titles return when the world strips us down. Soldier. Pastor. Mother. Warden.”

The last word slid in gently.

Eli did not react outwardly. Inside, a muscle in his back tightened.

Jonah smiled as if they shared a private joke. “Do not look so surprised. People talk. And the System talks more than people if one learns where to listen.”

Naomi set her cup down. “We came for medicine.”

“Of course.” Jonah’s attention turned to her with immediate softness. “And because your people are hurting. We have some supplies. Not enough for foolishness, enough for stewardship.”

“Then we can trade,” Eli said.

Jonah folded his hands. “What do you have?”

“Batteries. Two working propane camp stoves. Ammunition in mixed calibers. Dry goods.”

“And how many souls?”

Eli let a beat pass. “That part isn’t part of the trade.”

“Everything is part of the trade now.” Jonah’s voice never rose. That made it heavier. “Food consumption. Defensive burden. Labor capacity. Moral health. You know this already, whether you wish to or not.”

Mara leaned back in her chair. “You ask everybody for a census before you hand over aspirin?”

Jonah glanced at her. “Only the armed ones.”

She smiled with all her teeth. “Cute.”

He returned his gaze to Eli. “The supermarket is stable because we enforce order. We ration by obedience and contribution. We remove those who endanger the whole.”

Trent shifted in his seat. “Remove how?”

One of Jonah’s bat-wielding men smiled faintly. Jonah did not.

“Case by case,” the pastor said.

A child somewhere in produce started crying. The sound carried thin and desperate through the store before being hushed.

Naomi said, “There are people in your parking lot freezer tents. The family that came to us said you put them outside.”

“I gave them a chance to repent and remain.”