Max at least expected there to be a backdoor to the building somewhere behind the counter, but he only found an industrial sized kitchen and a locked freezer door. Infected Counter Lady was blocking the only exit and entrance to the store, he banging incessant and growing ever so troubling. Hadley had pulled Max and his sister away from the glass when it started to get too bloody for Margot to bear, and he'd had to take a moment to gather himself. His hands were still trembling as he led the others into the kitchen, asking for help pulling a cabinet out so they could hide behind it.

Margot shook her head. "That's way too small. We're not all going to fit. And if that waitress gets in and finds us, that's it. There's only one way in and one way out."

"Well then, what do you suggest, Gogo?" Max asked a whole lot crueler than he'd meant to. Even Hadley took a step back, and he could feel his face burning in mortification. But he didn't know how to express how he felt— how he was sorry and was just too terrified to think straight, and he really didn't mean to be so rude— so instead, he turned toward the freezer and made his way over to it.

"Do you think we can hide in here?" he asked, examining the lock.

"No way. Even if we got in, we'd have to take all the crap inside of it out and throw it aside before we could fit in. I think she would notice bags of meat lying on the floor and her newly opened freezer door and infect us all. And if you really want to know," Margot snapped, "I think we should break a window or something and get the hell out of here in Hads's car."

"And let that virus infect us all? Are you stupid?"

"We'll cover our faces with wet cloths or something, I don't know. But we need to get out of here, and we need to do it quick."

"Either way, I'm calling 911," Hadley interjected, whipping her phone out.

Max rubbed his temples, trying to calm down and think, but Counter Lady's rhythmic thumping and the loud tinkling as pieces of glass fell to the tile floor in the main room weren't helping. He and Margot always did this— they were always arguing over the most idiotic things and the worst possible times. And Max would always end up losing, sometimes because Margot was actually right and most of the time because he didn't want to fight with her anymore.

Out of the corner of his eye, Max spotted something white peeking out from inside of a cupboard to the left of him. He turned away from Margot, walking towards it, and reached for the handle. Pulling the door open, he found a dusty-looking first aid kit surrounded by several pots and pans. Max took it from its shelf and opened it.

"What are you doing?" Margot asked. "Are you even listening?"

Max pulled two packages from the kit. "Two pairs of gloves and one face mask," he said. "Who wants which? Face mask provides more protection against the disease, but anyone wearing gloves will be able to touch anything they want."

"I'm a touchy-feely person," Hadley said, shrugging and hanging up the phone. "All the police officers in town are currently deployed either at the explosion site or at the parade down the road, so we're not getting help for quite a while. Give me those gloves, and let's get out of here."

"We can call our parents."

Max scoffed. "Sure. Why don't you phone our dad and tell him, 'Hey, Dad? You know how you told me not to leave the house today? Yeah, so I kind of walked all the way to Pride and now I'm trapped in this restaurant downtown because the waitress was infected with some crazy virus that just killed the whole vibe of the parade. And maybe some of the people in the parade. Oh, and I brought Max here with me.'"

"And my girlfriend, Hadley, is here too," Margot continued boldly, staring her brother down. "Would you like to speak with her?"

Rolling his eyes, Max threw the pack of elastic gloves to Hadley and the mask to Margo. He ripped open his bag and pulled the rubber over his hands, flexing his fingers to get used to the feeling of his fingers' movement being restrained. The gloves were large on him and rolled all the way up to a patch of skin below his elbows, but they fit Hadley's large hands perfectly. Margot took quite a bit fitting the mask on her face, and Max started to worry that Counter Lady would get in before she even had time to put it on right, but Hadley helped her get it over her face and she was ready. They all were.

"Alright, we'll leave in Hadley's car like you suggested. But we'll have to get somewhere safe— somewhere where the virus can't get to us."

"Somewhere with barely any people then?" Margot asked. "And medical supplies? Like an abandoned hospital or whatever?"

"Except we don't have any of those for a fifty-mile radius. I meant more like a doctor's office with maybe six other people. Like Dr. Greg's place by our house. We'll call our parents there. Is that good?"

Hadley and Margot nodded, but Margot's ungloved hands were still trembling and Hadley was growing fidgety like she did when she was unsure of what she was doing— like that time Max had told her to give Margot daisies for her birthday, even though Margot pretended to hate flowers. Even Max wished they had more time to come up with a better, more formulated and organized plan and find more mask and gloves, but their time was up. Counter Lady seemed to bang out the ticking seconds of the clock, and the little shards of glass falling to the floor sang along with the milliseconds.

After the beginning of the Epidemic, milliseconds were important. Sometimes things went too fast to just be measured in seconds.

The three walked out of the kitchen, all of them purposefully ignoring Counter Lady and the shattering glass door. Hadley picked up that chair from before and held it against her body, steadying herself. Max and Margot were silent as she brought it back and then, with all her might, hurled it at the window, hard. The glass cracked a bit, and everyone's chest swelled with pride and victory at Hadley's work. Smiling now, she picked up the chair another time and another before the glass finally shattered and Margot could squeeze through the hole that was made.

Max followed his sister, scraping himself multiple times and ignoring the pain, stepping out onto the sidewalk. He was beckoning towards Hadley, hurrying her along, when the door finally shattered and Counter Lady was loose, along with all hell. Margot screamed as Max reached in for her girlfriend, because ax was the one wearing the gloves, and Max just kept thinking over and over, I should have given them to Margot. And before he could finish tugging her body through the jagged hole she had made, the hole she had worked so hard on making to get them all out of that wretched restaurant, the waitress rushed toward her and grabbed her foot.

"Help me! It hurts so much, please!" Counter Lady screeched over Hadley sobs.

"Gogo!" she screamed, and Max (being the dumbass he is) mistook it for, Go, go! And that's the exact reason why Maximilian loosened his grip on Hadley Cooper's arm, and she was yanked back through the hole by Counter Lady. Max couldn't even blink before she was already passed out on the hard tile floor, both she and Margot looking more dead than he'd ever seen them. And then, the screams. The gut-wrenching, heart-piercing screams.

Max covered his nose and mouth with his shirt, breathing haggardly, and pulled his sister away from the scene. It must have been ten seconds from the time Counter Lady destroyed the glass door to her infection of Hadley. In ten seconds, sneaked kisses, bouquets of lilies on birthdays, and times spent talking endlessly about absolutely nothing were all gone. Ten thousand milliseconds was all it took.

Margot just couldn't stop crying, no matter what Max did, and he couldn't blame her. His own hand were shaking, but he gripped on his sister's arm, hard, and asked himself why he couldn't have just done the same for Hadley. Then Margot's eyes would be dry, and they'd all be running on along the hard pavement, and Hadley would make a joke about how pretty his sister was and Max would pretend to be disgusted when really, he thought Margot and Hadley were perfect—

And then Max was crying, too, and cursing himself for not giving the gloves to Margot, who was three years older and stronger than him. She would have been able to pull her girlfriend out of the hole even at her weakest. And when Margot realized that, she shoved Max, hard, and started screaming at him like never before. He started screaming back, and then they were arguing, just like they always did, in the wrong place and at the wrong time, just to do something with all of the fiery emotions in their chests.

When he could finally manage it, Max locked his emotions away and just let Margot yell and scream until she started sobbing again. Then the two were on their way. And neither of them were ready for whatever might have laid ahead of them.

Hadley had been Margot's sun. Now that she was gone, Margot was in the dark, and Max— well, he had been his sister's shadow. He didn't know where that put him now that the light source that had created the shadow was gone. He didn't know where that put him at all.

~~~

The parade (along with tens of other events) had been shut down after the Outbreak, and there were cones and white tape everywhere. The booming music had been shut off and replaced with rough and raw screams from buildings around the city, starting at Pride and spreading outward. In the hour it had taken them to run through the backroads, Max and Margot only ran into another one of the Infected about twenty feet from their house, and they'd ran faster than they'd ever ran before-- away from the sickly man, away from what happened at the restaurant, away from the entire day, and even after they had stopped and were heaving on the living room floor, they were still running.

"We were supposed to go to the doctor's office," Margot said once she caught her breath. "Get up, and let's go."

Max didn't move. His legs burned with lactic acid, and his heart was thumping wildly in his chest, and his face was numb— but Max realized Margot probably felt tens times worse than he did, so he got up. He told himself Hadley wasn't like that crazy guy outside of their house, that she wasn't sick or infected or whatever. She was just calmly sitting upstairs in Margot's room, laying on the bed as the breeze from the window pulled her hair from her face. Then he decided that was too peaceful for Hadley— wild, party-loving, Margot-crazy Hadley— and thought of her at a party, waiting for Margot to meet her there. And that's where Margot and Max were going, to the party.

They were leaving out the back door, not because there was an Infected person on the other side of the house, but because their parents wouldn't let them out of the house. And they were walking there because taking the golf cart from the garage would wake their parents (even though the sun was only now setting), not because the garage door was at the front of the house, too. And Margot was silently crying because... because she was Margot, and if Margot wanted to cry, she could cry and cry and it wasn't any of Max's business. But then Margot started talking about Hadley, and just like that, it was Max's business.

"I got her chocolate for our one month anniversary," she started, not clarifying who "she" was because she didn't have to. They both knew. "Hadley hates chocolate, but I had no idea because, you know, it was our first month anniversary. We didn't do much talking in that first month."

"Just kissing,"' Max interjected, making a face.

Margot smiled and pushed him halfheartedly. Her voice sounded muffled behind the mask on her face, and Max would have tried to impersonate the nasally quality if she hadn't kept going. "She was so shocked and pleased and disgusted, you should have seen it. She was happy I'd thought about her and disappointed because she hadn't ever told me she hated chocolate. Just like...just like how I hadn't ever told her I loved her."

Max shut up right then, unable to say anything. He'd kind of known already, and he knew Hadley had known, too, but he couldn't put that feeling into words without sounding like an idiot. So instead, he told his sister, "And I never told you that I was gay, haha. Funny, right?"

"What?" Margot asked, her depressed expression gone. Then she said it again. "What? You were sitting on that this whole time? And you didn't tell me? How long have you been keeping this from me?"

Max shrugged. "Like a year. Or two. I mean, my birthday's coming, so maybe thr—"

"You jerk!" Margot shoved him again, harder this time, and Max shoved back until they were both running and shoving and giggling like they were crazy. In that moment, that five minute period (300,000 milliseconds), they were both able to forget Hadley and all the other crap that had happened that day. They just went on, joking and arguing with each other (well, Max was doing the arguing, and Margot was just loudly asking him why the hell he hadn't said anything and telling him she loved and accepted him), until they finally reached their destination.

The air was cool in Dr. Greg's office, and the entire building was mostly empty except for a traumatized nurse sitting in the corner, mumbling about the virus and whatever happened to everyone in the building and flinching hard at every loud noise. Max didn't even try to communicate with her— there are some things people have to get over by themselves. Watching your colleagues turn into screaming, contagious beast like creatures— watching the people who were supposed to cure illnesses fall to one so savage— probably qualified as one of those things. Margot pulled Max out of the main lobby, taking him aside and somewhere closer to the medical supplies. As soon as he could, he pulled a mask over his face and pinched the nose, making a face at the smell. Margot rolled his eyes and started talking about whatever she'd taken him in the abandoned office for.

"We have to be careful, dude," she said seriously, and Max listened. "This virus, or whatever it is, is spreading like wildfire. We were in that restaurant for like half an hour, and then it took us forever to walk home. Then you fell asleep on the floor at home— yeah, you fell asleep, you lazy ass. We were there for like two more hours. And then it took maybe ten minutes to get here.... And in that time, this crap spread around the entire town. So let's try to stay safe, got it?"

"Sure," Max agreed, his eyebrows furrowed. No wonder Margot had told him to hurry and get up back at the house. He couldn't even remember closing his eyes, much less falling asleep. "I'll keep you safe, and you keep me safe. And nobody gets sick."

Margot nodded. "Nobody gets Infected."

And that was when they both heard the voices in the lobby.