He ended up in a parking lot, a fact he could only be sure of because the ground under his feet was broken up by white lines painted every so far on the pavement. He saw something ahead of him, a shadow in the murk, something that was the wrong shape to be a drooler. It was too low, too wide. He pushed on farther, unable to run, barely able to walk. His lungs were cramping up, his body screaming at him that he wasn’t getting enough oxygen. He felt light-headed and heavy-bodied. If he didn’t get out of the smoke soon, he knew, he was going to die. It was that simple.

He reached the shape and wrapped his fingers around cold metal wire. He felt along its length and it started to move away from him. It was a shopping cart, that was all. It had one wobbly wheel. He pushed past it and found another, and then more of them, a whole shoal of them that rattled calamitously as he fell against them.

He got down, low to the surface of the lot, where the air was at its cleanest. It wasn’t enough. The smoke was still thick down there and his body refused to breathe properly. He tried to stand back up but it didn’t work. His legs just wouldn’t support his weight. He imagined himself crawling around the lot, miserable, sick, like a wounded animal. He imagined himself crawling around in circles like that for a while and then collapsing, dying.

It wasn’t all that hard to imagine. In his mind’s eye that end was quite clear.

He grabbed one of the carts. Hauled himself up its side with the muscles in his arms. They hadn’t been fatigued as much as his legs had by recent events. The cart held his weight, helped him get almost upright. He pushed forward and the cart moved away from him. He held on tight and his feet had no choice but to keep moving. He used the cart like an oversized walking frame, and followed it wherever it rolled.

Ahead of him the darkness thickened and grew solid. The cart rolled up a short ramp and then started to roll back. Tim gave it a little shove and it clattered up onto a curb. Ahead of him a wall grew more and more solid, resolved itself into bricks and mortar and a wide glass entrance way. He followed the cart as it rolled forward toward a stretch of dirty glass that chimed as it slid open before him—an automatic door, still functioning.

Inside lay a broad open space that was only filmy with smoke. The air was so sweet that Tim gulped at it as if he were drinking a nice cold beer, his lungs stretching out as they absorbed all that beautiful wonderful if slightly stale oxygen.

Around him coils and tendrils of smoke leaked into the enclosed space, and jealous of the newfound air he rushed inside and let the doors close behind him.

Before him stood a rank of check-out registers, each with its own laser scanner and conveyor belt. Just beyond them stood a waist-high chiller cabinet full of bottles of water.

Tim could not believe his good fortune. It was possible he had died and gone to heaven, he thought, as he tore open one of the bottles and brought it up to his lips. The water spilled all over the yellow-stained shirt that covered his mouth and nose and he laughed, then pulled down the makeshift bandana and sucked hungrily at the cold, cold water.

The air wasn’t perfect, it still stank of burning fuel. Almost instantly though it revived him, gave him his body back. His vision grew brighter and his throat even felt a little better once it was lubricated.

“Now just let this be a supermarket,” Tim said to himself. “And let it have a great selection of canned foods.”

When he felt well enough to get up and look around, though, he realized that his luck wasn’t as good as that. Tim had never expected Heaven to be perfect, but he would have preferred if it hadn’t turned out to be a gardening supply store. There were thousands of plants on display, none of them edible. There were piles of tools for sale, wheelbarrows and hoes and rakes and trowels and weeding claws, but none of them looked particularly effective as weapons with which to fight droolers, at least none more effective than the baseball bat already in his possession.

There was no food to be had anywhere in the store. In the back offices he found a break room, complete with a refrigerator that hummed away merrily. Inside he found several half-eaten cups of yogurt and a pastrami sandwich covered in furry blue mold. He was hungry enough to try the sandwich but he knew that it must have been there for over a month. There was no way it was still good. If he ate it and subsequently threw up that would just weaken him further. He had a few crumbs of protein bar left in his pack. They tasted delicious.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, he told himself. The water was what he’d really needed, and there was more of it than he could ever carry. The air inside the superstore was even more to his liking.

He sat down in an aisle full of colorful seed packets and just let himself breathe for a while. He could feel that the smoke had done real damage to his lungs—there was a slight hitch every time he inhaled too deeply—and he wanted to rest for a while before moving on. Before going back into the smoke.

Just sitting was boring, of course. He wanted something to engage his attention, so he took out his cell phone. That was less than restful, because it gave him two shocks, experienced in rapid succession. The first came when he looked at the clock display. He had less than five hours left before his rendez-vous with Sasha—it had taken him nineteen hours just to get as far as the superstore.

The other shock was that the little envelope icon showed at the top of the display, the symbol that said he had messages waiting. Thirteen of them.