66) Super Sunday, February 19th:
5:45 to 5:50 AM… “Gotterdammerung!”
David Lee and
Kristi hobbled towards the edge of the roof overlooking the Western entrance,
then retreated – leaning against the now-extinguished One World Mall sign. Beneath sprawled a vista from Hiroshima,
perhaps, or Rome amidst the barbarian invasions… corpses and screaming madmen,
gunfire and broken glass, burning cars and solitary figures tugging huge caches
of plunder through the parking lot and
towards darkened streets that radiated outwards from the Mall like the
spokes of a deranged wheel. Not a police
car or fire engine in sight… they could, also, see flames pouring out of the
ruptured windows of the Westernly exposed shoppes below, smell the gasoline and blood, feel the heat
as it rose from the cheap tarpaper covering One World’s roof…
“Maybe this isn’t the best place to be…” David
allowed…
“So hot!
Feels like the roof of that building must’ve felt, that one in the nine
eleven?” ventured Kristi. “All those
people trapped… the ones who went down lived, some of them, those who went to
the roofs all went really down…”
‘You think we
should go back down there?” David pointed.
“I didn’t say
that. I don’t know… I manage the
research division of the FCC, and I don’t even know how to get out of a burning
building. Me!” she exclaimed, with
ashamed amazement.
“We weren’t
thinking,” David tried to justify his actions.
“There were the dogs, guns… we just acted. No thought processes at all, gone… phewt! Now I think
I’m going to get rabies… if I do, start frothing at the mouth and acting
strange, please shoot me…”
“With what?”
asked the Research manager…
“Or, I don’t
know, throw me over the edge…”
“Yeah. Hey, didn’t we see over on the other side,
there were some trees near the entrance towards the playground and the
department store. And the chocolate
shop… brrr!… I’ll never look at a Whitman’s Sampler the
same way, again…”
“Let’s not think
about Gobs. Or Vern… I guess it wouldn’t
hurt to check out that side…” David agreed.
So he began
limping after Kristi but, as they crossed the Mall, seeing the southern door
closed; now, however, it flew open and two figures stepped out…
“Oh shit…” David
exclaimed.
Kristi lifted a
hand… and found that she was still holding the sluggish, red rat. Letting it roll from her fingers, she dug
into the purse she’d kept strapped over her arm through all of her travails,
and warned: “Step back! Don’t come any closer! I’ve got pepper spray…”
The newcomers
were Westy Soames and Tom Eppert… so covered with politically incorrect soot that he
might’ve been another branch onf Miz
Lottie’s family tree.
“It’s OK, lady…” Westy tried to assure her, “we’re not here to steal anything,
or hurt anybody…”
“How do we know?”
David challenged.
“How do we know
about you?” Tom replied.
“Got me
there!” The researcher turned to
Kristi. “I think they’re alright, but watch it… keep that shit at hand…”
“You know any way of getting’ down?”
Tom asked David.
“Jump?”
Kristi swallowed
a cough. It was starting to get bad,
even up here. “How did you make it
through the fire? It’s like an oven…
maybe that end…”
She pointed
north, but there was just enough moonlight and arsonlight
to see Westy shake his head.
“You don’t want
anything to do with down there. Place is
crawling with gangs, cops, crazy people… burning
crazy people… ain’t even botherin’
to pick up stuff anymore, just lookin’ for anybody to
shoot or even just hug, set them on fire,
too…”
“What is wrong
with them? Gangs, OK… and the Screaming
Eagles – they were trained to do what
they do… but there are so many normal-looking people that seem to have just lost it… not quite as badly as Mr. Gobelman, he was a special case…” Kristi’s voice trailed
off.
“They’re football
fans,” guessed David. “They wait
throughout the year while they work at their miserable jobs and never get ahead
of the bills so that they can’t even buy their kids crap for Christmas, then
just when the home team gets into the Superbowl, the
government takes it away from them. We take it away…”
“The President did change the date back…” Kristi
reminded him.
“Too late…” David
shook his head.
“The President
did what? Set the Superbowl
back?” Westy stepped back, himself…
“No, man, the
transition. So we could watch the game
on our old sets…” Tom said, “‘cept that your
cousin-in-law burned up mine. No hard
feelings… it’s only a game…”
“You mean this… all of this…
and Soames waved a hand at the world and at the burning One World Mall, “was
for nothing?”
“Guess so!” David admitted.
“Damn!”
¾ ¾ ¾
The battle for dominion within the darkened Giga-Plex was almost over… its defenders deserted or slain, the
implacable enemy still advancing by torchlight.
The zombies had fashioned rude flambeaus of computer paper, looted
plastic bags and DVD cases, rendering them visible, appealing targets – if only
for the few remaining big box sentinels who had ammunition left. But it was gone – their own, and that which
had been scavenged from the dead… Jurgen and Sammy
from Club 007, Tatlinger, the brave accountant, the
militant clown and a temp security guard whose name Mark Tenison
had never even learned. Their corpses
lay sprawled atop or amidst the looted registers… riddled with lead and
blood. Occasional gunfire erupted from
the direction of the torch-wielding invaders, but sporadically… the mall
zombies no longer had any idea whom or what they were shooting at in the dark,
and there was plunder for the taking…
Mark Tenison whispered: “Is anybody left?”
A voice replied,
“I am…”
“Anjelika? Are you…”
“I have a few of
their bullets in me,” groaned Big Sonny’s ambassador. “But I am strong, I will fight on…”
This, somehow,
angered the store manager. “I meant…” he spat, “do
you have any ammo left? I’m out…”
“No ammo! But I do have two samurai swords. Take one…” Anjelika
offered.
Mark groped in
the dark, felt something cool and metallic and grasped it. Although neither the besieged, nor the
invaders could see, the flames had reached Kravjak’s,
Fuzzy Planet and the Giga-Mart… the metal shutters still surrounding Giga-Plex keeping much of
the smoke out and the heat back, but only for so long. Now the air had become stifling; the metal
surfaces on the registers warm to the touch, but the sword was still cool,
still sharp, still strong… and the blade was wet. Jurgen… or, maybe,
Sammy… had not gone down without taking a toll.
“Anjelika?” Mark ventured.
“I am here…”
“The fire door is
still open, there may be a way out of this place. You don’t have to stay…”
“It is my fate,”
she answered. “Mein schicksaal! What about yours…”
“The captain
always goes down with his ship…” Tenison answered,
stoically, as he hoped to seem.
“Já, but you are not the Captain, nor is it your ship…”
“Well, Big Sonny
would’ve wanted it, this way…” the manager rationalized.
At the other end
of the mall, there came a loud WHOOSH!
and a jet of fire erupted from Appliantology,
accompanied by horrid, electronic squealing and sudden brightness…
“They’re setting
the smart furniture on fire,” Mark told his last comrade. “They don’t know it, but they’re killing
themselves… the whole Mall is burning down around us, but they don’t care…”
A nearer, fiery
explosion from the vicinity of the mobile phone station allowed him a brief
glimpse of the Valkyrie… her white blouse under the leather biker jacket bloodspattered, her hair loosed and flowing free and, for
perhaps the first and certainly only time in his short, cruel life, Mark Tenison felt something approximating infatuation…
“That will be the
music and the movies they are putting to the torch,” Anjelika
said, pointing out far into the distance, where thousands of plastic compact
disk and video containers were burning.
“Good for them! I hate this culture… there has been no
great art for more than a century in this decadent democracy. No Goethe, Schiller, no Wagner…”
And voices rose
from behind the torches bobbing from the blazing cellphone corner, to their left,
and Sputnik Station, to their right…
“Hey, there’s
still people, over there, by the registers…” a drunken voice floated through
the smoke, answered by a dozen others…
“Kill ‘em!…”
Mark
instinctively ducked, evading a barrage of gunfire that may well have crossed
the length of the store to cut down some of the looters firing from the other
direction – after which the torchbearing zombies
began asking: “Anybody there?” and speculating aloud whether there still was
money in the registers. He gripped his
sword.
“I now admit
that, when I came to this place, I find you repulsive, little man. But now you are worthy,” Anjelika
sighed. “I will fight by your side, and
we will enter Paradise together…”
“In my gold,
Giga-Plex vest…” Mark proudly fingered the now-greasy
fabric…
He saw Anjelika’s profile rising.
“We will fight together, back to back… we will kill many until we are
overtaken and carried up to Heaven...”
She began to sing
as zombies… dozens of zombies with
torches, guns, knives, clubs and improvised weapons fashioned from incongruous
merchandise components… advanced through the smoky abyss.
“Is that Wagner?”
Mark guessed.
“The liéder of the Twilight of God. Do you know it?”
“No, but I always
thought it would be way cool to go out, like… with the music from that movie
with Brando, bald and crazy…”
“Die Walküre? Ja!” Anjelika misunderstood. “I shall sing, and we shall fight…”
Backs touching,
they stepped out from behind the registers as one, and advanced to meet an
enemy which… as if possessed by quixotic honour,
refrained from merely gunning them down, electing to fight with pikes and
torches, clubs and improvised swords of their own. As the One World warriors slashed and
skewered their enemies before collapsing from the dozens of wounds inflicted,
the flames from Appliantology leaped outwards and
skywards, blowing open the security barricades and igniting the cheap paneling
above the skywalk while, trotting in from the carnage without, the pitbull Brunhilde nosed her way
through the ruptured Exit – trotting forth to join the battle, stunted tail
wagging furiously.
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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