Dot winced with every tromp of boot on tiled floor. She could hear people rummaging, pulling down boxes and tearing into the contents. Things fell to the ground.

She changed locations, putting some distance between herself and them. It didn’t help; their explorations meant they drew nearer to her as she lurked on a high shelf.

“…names you can’t pronounce, grab that first.”

“Why? Preservatives?”

“Preservatives, yep. Keep a close eye out for the products with the wrong names.”

“Wrong names?”

“If it’s not called soap, but a ‘cleansing bar’ that means it’s so loaded with crud that they weren’t legally allowed to call it soap. That shit is gold to us, because the chemicals in it mean it lasts. If it lasts, it can be resold back home.”

“Soap goes bad?”

“It can. I’d rather take the misnamed shit that lasts than take something more legit home and find out it went bad.”

“Good point.”

“We’ll teach you all the tricks. It’s a good gig, believe me.”

“Yeah. Hey, are those fridges?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Power was probably out for months to a year before someone got this building back on line.”

“You think they have ice cream? Or those push-freezes?”

“You don’t want ice cream, remember? You want—”

“Frozen dairy-like desserts or something.”

“Now you get it.”

Dot watched as the younger man jogged across the floor to what was almost certainly his imminent demise. He opened the glass door to the fridge display and began picking his way through cardboard boxes.

She could see the green lights appearing in the background of the display, flicking on one by one, apparently at random.

The older man noticed, stopping in his tracks.

“Jackson!” he screamed the word.

The machine rammed through the wall. Six feet tall, six feet wide, with two legs, it slammed past metal racks, past food in cardboard boxes, through the glass doors, through the metal that the doors were attached to, and into Jackson.

Both legs broken. From the way he hit the ground, his arm might have been broken too.

One mechanical leg thrust out, then dragged Jackson back into the hole in the wall. Another reached out and began depositing a thin white fluid on the bloodstain.

Jackson’s mentor was running and the machine was just starting to clean up the blood when two more belatedly thrust their way out through the walls. They paused where they were, seemed to decide what they were doing, and then used wheels on their underbellies to roll along the floor, the two forelimbs out and ready.

Gaps appeared in the face of each machine as they drew closer. Jackson’s mentor shouted to friends elsewhere in the building as he rounded a corner in the shelves and stacks.