GRENUN: When The Air Killed Us

Chapter 7: The Apotheke

 1

My boots kick against the dark, submerged steps of the second floor, sending ripples of oily green-tinged water washing against the peeling wallpaper.

*SKRRR-HHHH. SKRRR-HHHH.*

Inside my Dräger respirator, every breath feels like dragging dry sand across raw flesh. Sweat is pooling at the base of my chin inside the rubber skirt, sloshing against my skin with every step. My lower lens is so fogged from my frantic breathing that the world looks like a smear of dark grey shadows and yellow water reflections.

Behind me, far up the stairwell, the wet *clack-clack* of Frau Lindemann’s slippers on concrete doesn't stop.

She isn't running. She doesn't need to. She is just descending, step by step, letting her deadly breath fill the vertical shaft of the building like silent gas.

I burst through the fire door into the alleyway behind Hauptstrasse. The rain has turned into a thick, oily drizzle that smells of burnt plastic and sulfur. The street is a drowned canal—water sloshing waist-deep around overturned cars, floating trash cans, and shattered shop signs.

Fifty yards down the street, set into the reinforced brick wall of an old pharmacy, a heavy steel security shutter is pulled half-down over the glass display window. Above it, a red neon sign flickers weakly against the grey gloom: **APOTHEKE**.

*Clean air.* *Dry space.*

I plunge into the knee-deep black floodwater, holding the yellow box high against my chest with my left arm, my right hand shielding the intake filters on my jaw from the falling toxic rain.

### 2

I slam my fist against the reinforced glass of the pharmacy door.

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

"Let me in!" I scream through my mask. My voice comes out as a wet, muffled bark. "I'm clean! I'm wearing a level-three respirator! Open the door!"

No answer. Only the low, distant roar of the ocean crashing against the sea wall and the faint hum of the wind.

I look back over my shoulder. At the entrance of the dark alleyway, twenty yards away, a figure steps out of the shadow of the stairwell door. Frau Lindemann. Her wet floral apron clings to her knees. Her milky eyes shine in the gloom, and her mouth opens in a soft, wet oval as she exhales another plume of pale green vapor into the coastal breeze.

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

"Open the damn door!" I yell, slamming my elbow against the glass.

Suddenly, a small rectangular slide in the metal door shoots open with a sharp *CLACK*.

Behind the heavy double-paned glass, a pair of intense, sharp hazel eyes locks onto mine. The skin around her eyes is bruised with dark circles, her dark hair pulled back into a tight, practical knot. She is wearing a heavy black tactical coat and a double-canister industrial mask strapped tight across her face.

In her right hand, pressed flat against the reinforced glass, is the cold steel barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun aimed directly at my visor.

"Show me your mask seal," a voice barks through a small exterior speaker grill. It's sharp, cold, and entirely devoid of mercy.

### 3

"Look!" I press my jaw forward against the glass, showing her the thick rubber gasket pressed tight against my skin. "It's sealed! Dräger dual-filter! No leaks!"

The hazel eyes don't soften. "That doesn't mean shit. You could have taken a lungful of fog twenty seconds ago before you put it on."

"I was inside Sub-Level 3 when the quake hit! I haven't taken a single open breath since the alarms went off!"

"Everyone says that," she replies flatly. She cocks the shotgun with a heavy *CLICK-CLACK* that echoes through the speaker. "You want in? Here are the rules of the Apotheke. You hold your breath."

"What?" I gasp, my lungs twitching inside my chest.

"Disconnect your intake filter. Hold your breath for thirty seconds while I inspect your skin. If you twitch, if you cough, if your eyes go milky, I put a slug through the glass and let you drown in the alley. Starting now."

My blood runs cold.

*Disconnect the filter? In the open alley rain?*

Behind me, the wet splash of slippers in the water is getting closer. Frau Lindemann is fifteen yards away. The yellow fog around her head is drifting down the alley, swept toward us by the tailwind.

"Ten seconds," the woman behind the door says calmly. "Nine. Eight..."

I don't have a choice.

With shaking, sweat-slick fingers, I reach up to the right side of my respirator. I twist the heavy plastic charcoal filter ninety degrees until the bayonet mount clicks loose, yanking the canister off the mask. Open, unfiltered air rushes against the intake valve.

I trap the breath inside my lungs, biting down on my tongue, locking my diaphragm in place.

*One.*

*Two.*

*Three.*

The woman steps closer to the glass, shining a high-powered tactical flashlight straight into my eyes. The blinding white beam sears my retinas, illuminating the small red veins in my sclera, searching for the tell-tale milky film of the Grenun infection.

*Ten.*

*Eleven.*

My lungs scream for air. The agony behind my sternum explodes into a blinding throb. Sweat drips into my eyes, stinging like fire, but I force my eyelids to stay wide open, staring straight into the flashlight beam without blinking.

Through the glass, her eyes move down to my left arm.

The light catches the bright yellow plastic of the emergency box clutched against my ribs, illuminating the heavy brass latch and the sharp red biohazard symbol stamped into its side.

Her hazel eyes widen slightly behind her mask. The barrel of the shotgun lowers by an inch.

*Twenty-five.*

*Twenty-six.*

My vision begins to spin. Black spots swarm the edges of the flashlight beam. My chest violently twitches—a massive muscle spasm trying to force my throat open.

*Twenty-nine.*

*Thirty.*

"Filter back on!" she snaps.

I slam the charcoal canister back into the bayonet mount, twisting it until it locks with a hard *CLICK*. I purge the mask—*PHUT-CLACK*—and drag in a deep, dry breath of clean carbon air.

The heavy steel door unlocks with a loud hydraulic hiss and swings open three inches.

"Inside. Now."

### 4

I throw myself through the gap, my boots splashing onto the dry tile floor of the pharmacy interior. The woman slams the door shut behind me, shoving the heavy iron security bolt into place and spinning the wheel lock until it seals tight.

The silence inside is sudden and absolute.

It smells of rubbing alcohol, stale sweat, dried blood, and powdered chalk. The pharmacy main floor has been gutted: glass display cases are turned on their sides to form barricades against the windows; heavy plastic tarping covers the apothecary shelves; and three battery-powered lantern lamps cast long, amber shadows across the room.

I slump against the wall, sliding down onto the tile, clutching the yellow box against my knees, heaving heavy breaths through my filters.

"Mask off?" a thick, gravelly male voice rumbles from the shadows near the back counter.

I look up.

A massive man in a torn leather jacket steps out of the gloom. His arms are thick as tree trunks, covered in grease and old tattoos. In his right hand, he holds a heavy iron tire iron; in his left, he holds a worn gas mask with a cracked visor held together by clear duct tape.

His eyes aren't on my face. They are locked entirely on my chest—specifically, on the three plastic water bottles tucked into my coat pockets and the yellow box in my arms.

"He's clean, Jonas," the woman says, lowering her shotgun but keeping her finger near the trigger. "His eyes are clear."

"I don't care if his eyes are clear, Mara," Jonas growls, stepping closer, his heavy boots thudding against the floorboards. "He's carrying three bottles of fresh spring water. Uncontaminated. And a sealed medical box from the bio-tech facility."

Jonas points the sharp edge of the tire iron straight at my chest.

"Take off your coat, kid," Jonas says, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "You're donating your water and your filters to the Apotheke. Or you're going back out into the street."

Before I can answer, a sound echoes from the back room behind the prescription counter.

A wet, heavy, rattling cough.

Everyone in the room instantly goes dead silent.

Mara freezes. Jonas’s jaw tightens, his eyes darting toward the closed wooden door of the storage room.

*COUGH.* *COUGH-COUGH.*

It isn't a normal cough. It sounds like someone trying to breathe through a sponge soaked in thick grease.

Jonas turns back to me, his face pale in the lantern light, his knuckles white around the tire iron. He glares at me with a look of raw, unadulterated hatred.

"You brought it in," Jonas whispers, his voice shaking with terror and rage. "You brought the fog into my brother's room."