61) Super Sunday, 2/19: 5:10
– 5:20 AM – “The Goblin
Returns!”
The explosions in Deems’ Hardware and Oil Change Charlie’s burst
the other safe concealed within the
candy machine in the latter’s office that Ray, the girls and Dusty had failed to find; a toxic but exhilarating
cloud of designer drug petrochemicals, vaporized human flesh and
semi-pharmaceutical quality methamphetamine blowing hundred dollar bills before
it while fluorescent rats scampered and wounded, wheezing zombies crawled
beneath the death cloud through the catwalks and corridors of One World. After passing the crazy man atop the big,
black laughing head, Craig Synch and Vicki Gordon edged back along the catwalks
to the south and west, away from Deems and towards the corridor fronting the
row of shops comprising that quadrant of the One World Mall. Away from Giga-Plex, overlooking
establishments that had already been pillaged, they were all but alone, and
able to look downwards into each and assess their chances…
Craig guided
Vicki away from the nearest door. “Too
many wackos from the liquor store still hanging ‘round Roasted World,” he shook
his head.
“What would all
those nuts be doing in a nut store?” Vicki asked, still favoring her ankle.
“I think it’s
like… you know… if you drink a lot of beer, you wanna
eat something salty. Pretzels, peanuts…”
“What do you know
about drinking beer? You’re what…
sixteen?” Vicki frowned.
“Seventeen. I got a brother, your age… he’s got fake ID,
a good one…”
The pain forced
Vicki to lean on Craig’s shoulder as they limped south along the rails. “Is he cute?
Your brother?”
“Oh yeah… an’
he’s also engaged,” Craig punctured that balloon. “To a major
slut. With a motorcycle…”
Next up was the
House of Time, but… as Craig ventured a peek through the catwalk door… one of
about a dozen very angry-looking men (and three even meaner women) looked up
and fired a shot at him…
“Get off our turf,
motherfucker…” snarled a balding mountain of slag with a dozen watches
interspersed among the tattoos on his bare arm.
“Like those guys,” Vicki pointed, wincing. “Her?”
Craig backed
off. “That ain’t gonna work. Too many expensive Rolexes and Fauxlexes there, draws a mean crowd… can you keep moving?”
“If I ignore the
pain. Guess I’m stuck with you, then…”
Vicki sighed.
“Hey, it ain’t so bad. Lotta
older women dig younger guys, it’s cool now,” Craig assured her, “…Demi and
Ashton, Madonna and what’s-his-name.
Those high school teachers…”
“They’re all divorced. I meant,” Vicki explained, “I’ll have to
lean on your sorry, juvenile ass… arm, I mean… until we get out of here. Nothing more.
What about the bookstore?” she suggested.
Craig opened the
door and a blast of hot, smoky air assailed them. He looked briefly downwards, then closed the
door.
“Nobody
inside. But it’s on fire, bad… and
there’s too much smoke down there, around the pizza joint…”
“What’s next, the
perfume place?”
“Don’t remember –
something else, I think…”
“Doesn’t perfume
burn?” Vicki worried.
Craig forced the
catwalk door open and looked down into I. Prescott’s funeral home. It was partitioned off by walls rising up
halfway to the roof into a reception area (with a blown-out window and looted
cashbox on the floor) and a half a dozen small showrooms, full of caskets,
artificial floral displays, bronze and marble monuments… accessible by one of
the ubiquitous yellow ladders leading down into a tiny, ransacked office.
“What a crummy
place to be lying dead in,” Vicki wrinkled her nose.
“Looks empty, not
on fire,” Craig ventured. “And it’s our
only way out. Can you climb down? I’ll go first, if it hurts too much, you can
put your foot on top of my head awhile…”
“That’s… freaky…”
giggled the cashier.
“Freaky, that’s
my middle name. I may be young, but I know things…” Craig boasted.
“Like…”
“Like how we get
out of here alive…”
¾ ¾ ¾
If the television display were nearer the loading dock, the mob
pouring into Giga-Plex through the stockroom wall might’ve massed there,
choosing and fighting over the remaining electronic merchandise, but, as it was
still on the eastern wall, the zombies had a no-man’s-land to cross and… at
first… were brought up short by gunfire from the handful of employees and
security who’d confiscated arms from fallen privateers. The less-demented in the throng fanned out
through Appliantology – those with even more sense,
or firearms of their own, taking shelter behind the smart furniture and
washer-dryer combos. Most of those
without either were quickly caught in a crossfire. Two zombies shot, but not quite killed… one
by Tatlinger, behind his desk in the tech and credit
tent, one from behind by a Screaming Eagle who’d escaped the loading dock with
just a few cracked ribs… collapsed on the Moondreams
smart bed, inciting it to a rambling jumble of conflicted medical advice,
rising and falling in synchronicity with the plaintive cries of Henry, the
robot, now reduced to an aggressive “I help you… help you…”
Two hungry rats,
one saffron and domesticated, the other wild and brown, had discovered and
attacked such remains of Leland Buford Sonnenschein
as poked out from under the ruined Dominator, circling the tragic scene,
lapping up blood and nibbling at Big Sonny’s exposed fingers and brains. Indifferent, even impervious to the fires
fore and aft, Mark-Down Mark Tenison prowled his shrinking domain - a
gold-vested Ahab, waving his empty gun and screeching at the world and Captain
Capps, who’d taken up a position (with Rifleman Stu) behind a cruciform,
chest-high display of converter boxes marked up from $189.99 to $195.95.
“Alright! Alright, you cowardly bastards… you win! You…”
Tenison shouted to Capps as bullets whistled past his scalp, “unlock the south
Fire Door, Mark-down Mark won’t. You’n the rest of your yellow-bellied deserters… get your
asses out of my store and run back to
Waco. Git!”
He whirled,
aiming at a pair of terrified, white-haired cashiers hiding behind a register
but, with the gun already empty, they remained alive… trembling and muttering
prayers. Then, Mark hurled his ring of
keys at the Eagles’ impromptu shelter south of the television henge, cruelly
letting it fall short, obligating the Captain to make a dangerous dash to
retrieve them - making up his mind in the process, Capps slapped Stu on the
shoulder.
“Cover me! I’m gonna open that fire door…”
“Are we
extricating?” Stu parried…
“Soon as I get
these civilians out of here. That nut,”
and he pointed his weapon towards the raving, strutting Manager… “he can stay behind and be a hero…”
Rifleman Stu nodded. “Ain’t nobody here
left to sign our paychecks…”
“There will be lawyers…” Capps predicted.
And with that
inevitability stated, Lester crabwalked back through
the razor-pointed satellite dishes and tuners, then alongside the registers
nearest the security booth. Fortunately,
the fire door was by the nearby Exit, not the more distant Entrance… even more
fortunately, most of the invaders had let their weapons sag unless fired upon -
awed and overcome by the strange luxuries now at hand, theirs for the
snatching. Slim and Easy, for example,
had taken cover in the 007 Club – finding plenty of exotic weaponry left behind
by Capps and Westy…
“Lookit these…” Easy pointed.
“Nunchakas…”
“Nuns use
these? Damn!” Easy swore. “I knew them Catholic schools were tough,
but…”
“Not that kinda
nuns. From chop-socky movies,” Slim
educated his companion with a few gestures…
“Bruce Lee! Jackie Chan!”
Easy, losing
interest, tossed them aside. “Not good
enough. They got guns, we got nuns? What’s those?”
He pointed to a
box under the counter, covered in Chinese writing with the sole English word:
“Grenades”. Slim brightened…
“Oh, they’s fun,” he grinned.
“Big fun…”
Capps removed the
padlock from the fire door in the metal gate… the visitors and Giga-Plex
employees dutifully lining up, crouching behind registers as Rifleman Stu, two
remaining Eagles, three GP security guards and a handful of staff… Jurgen and
Sammy from 007 (each wielding a samurai sword), Tatlinger
(his sleeves rolled up, cigar jutting from his mouth), one of Big Sonny’s
clowns with paramilitary fantasies to go with his lethal armaments, Anjelika and, for what it would be worth, Mark Tenison,
re-invigorated after confiscating a loaded Sig Sauer from a dead looter, lay
down a sporadic covering fire. One of
the Giga-guards potshotted a kid thumbing through the
scattered game cartridges and Capps looked up, barking…
“Don’t waste
ammo! If they’re not hurting us, don’t
hurt them…”
Mark Tenision jumped to the defense of his dead employer’s
property. “They’re stealing…” he insisted, truculently…
“Let the lawyers
and insurance people sort it out.
Besides, you got ‘em on tape…”
Capps pointed
upwards to the surveillance cameras and Tenison smiled, in spite of himself,
then snarled and pointed at one of the looters straddling a stanchion, removing
a surveillance camera with a screwdriver.
“Hey! Hey!”
The guy grinned
back and actually waved before Mark shot at him, missing. Shaking his head, Capps motioned for the
employees to exit, warning those who’d not already shed their vests to do
so. The One World Mall now resembled
nothing so much as the tail end of a poorly-organized and policed parade… loot
and litter scattered indiscriminately, empty liquor bottles, a handful of dazed
people wandering around. Vern Cooth tried to squeeze out ahead of Rae and Crystal, the
Giga-Grrrlz, and David held him back…
“Let the ladies
go first…”
“They ain’t ladies.” Cooth spat,
venomously. “And get your hands off me
or I’ll have you up on assault charges…”
David
sighed. “Go fuck yourself, Vern. I don’t work for you anymore, and, pretty
soon, you won’t even be working for
yourself.”
Marko Mosrovich, pockets bulging with iPods and prepaid
cellphones, squeezed out with the Grrrlz, Rae and Crystal,
scampering into the Promenade where only one vehicle… the much-battered classic
Caddy… continued ramming the gate. Marko
hailed the driver…
“Back door’s open. Everybody’s in what’s goin’ in already. Goin’ shopping…”
The driver was a
kid with a shock of dirty blond hair over one eye and the demented glare of a
methedrine manchild on a mission. And now… nothing. He backed off with a horrible, grinding
noise. “Ah, fuck…”
“Give us ride out
back, I give you iPod…” Marko waved the forbidden fruit before the hayseed’s
eyes…
The driver
glanced from the iPod to the Grrrlz. “OK, get in, I take you round back…
hurry! Then we all go home and parr- tee!…”
Three fighting
dogs who’d been rooting around in the remains of Petworld
trotted back, then charged at the sight of more two-legged prey. Marko and the Grrrlz
slammed the Caddy doors, so the dogs changed direction, lunging after the next
trio to leave… Vern, David and Kristi…
David
pointed. “Oh shit…”
Vern, as ever,
had a solution. “Run!”
They took off towards the Food Court, hellhounds on their heels,
and David vaulted the counter at Baffler, helping Kristi up. Vern turned to see if the dogs were behind
him… and they were! Iggy’s “baby”, Brunhilde, sank her teeth into his calf, hamstringing the
FCC Manager, the others were on him in a flash, tearing at his eyes, throat,
his flailing hands…
David pointed
upwards, now, towards Ghede bulging eyes. “Don’t look!
Climb!”
Needing no
further prompting, Kristi grabbed a jagged tooth in the lower jaw of the laughing,
shaking head, and pulled herself upwards.
Ghede’s mouth was a human-sized cave, full of
electronics and the biggest, loudest speakers she’d ever heard… the din was
hellish and she jumped up instinctively, grasping the laughing Haitian Orisha
by its nose and wriggling upwards. David
leaped after her and Brunhilde after him, sinking her
teeth through his shoe and into his heel.
Kicking desperately, David sent shoe and dog flying off onto the
Baffler’s griddle, still hot. As the dog
howled in pain and frustration, recoiling from the griddle in a shower of hot
grease and meat pie detritus, he followed his supervisor into Ghede’s bellowing mouth, shouting at Kristi who shouted,
inaudibly, back, pointing to her ears and motioning for him to give her a lift
up. Spreadeagled across the icon’s nose,
she averted her head as red, electric flames issued from its eyes, then crawled
upwards, finally grasping two handfuls of the plastic thatch that passed for
hair, while David fruitlessly pulled wires in the mouth in a fruitless attempt
to cut off the noise.
Kristi pulled
herself up atop the statue, only to meet the crazed eyes of… Jack Gobelman!
“Fancy meeting you here…” said her predecessor.
Goblin lacked the
reciprocity of a taser, but he did have an empty wine bottle and cracked his
hated tormentor across her skull. As
David Lee, down below, shouted out: “Kristi!”…barely audible in the interstices
between Ghede’s bellowings…
Gobelman hoisted his evil successor over his
shoulder, then up to a catwalk less than a yard above the top of the big,
plastic head, pulled himself up, too, and began to drag Kristi towards the
larger passage above the Promenade, turning east, away from the blazing,
propane-fueled inferno of Deems Hardware and towards the eastern tier of shops
past Kravjak’s and the Fairplayground. David Lee finally spotted him dragging Kristi
towards the door above the 1910 Ice Cream Shoppe and began climbing himself,
blood now dripping from his heel to the hot griddle, but… even with the
fighting dogs distracted by the meat pies and corpses littering the floor of
the Food Court… half a dozen highly intoxicated zombies tugging suitcases of
beer lurched out of Giga-Mart and, for reasons known only to them, if that,
mounted the Baffler countertop to climb after him.
“Give it up!” one cried out,
“Give what?” he shot back.
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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