[48] Dead Shopping

⌈Ramesh⌋

It didn't take long before Alan and I reunited with the others.

There was no dramatic reunion. No one had the energy for that. After clearing the zombies around the side entrance, we made our way back into the mall and found the others waiting near the atrium.

I couldn't let these kids run to their deaths after all.

Call me insane for doing this, but having lived this long... perhaps it was something I truly wanted for myself. Not out of some self-righteous principle. Perhaps it was simply atonement for what I couldn't have done for my own flesh and blood.

"You're here."

"Mr Ramesh..."

"Thank you sir."

...

Their relief was genuine. So was the happiness on their faces. That was enough, I'd made the right decision.

"...Yeah."

A few words were exchanged, supplies were gathered, and we made sure everyone was accounted for.

Then, after some time had passed, we were all gathered together again.

Alan stood in front of us as the leader of the group, looking towards the upper floors of the mall.

"Are you guys ready?"

Everyone affirmed in their own way. I merely stood at the back, watching over them like a guardian.

I didn't know what he had seen. I didn't know why he was so certain that this was where we were supposed to go. But he knew. That was enough for them. He was a boy with an Awakened ability. In the world we lived in now, perhaps there was going to be times when you had to go against common sense. That time for me, was probably right now. If he truly knew where everyone had to go to, then maybe there was a reason I had come back to help them too.

I tightened my grip around the handle of my steel rod and looked towards the darkness above.

Whatever awaited us up there, I would follow.

"Let's go. Up those stairs."

Alan took the lead, and the others followed. I stayed at the back as we began making our way across the mall, heading towards the far end of the atrium where a spiral staircase waited.

We hadn't taken more than a few steps before Maki broke the silence with a whisper.

"...Do you think it'll ever go back to how it was?"

Nobody interrupted her.

Maki looked around the mall as she continued. The abandoned shops. The darkened signs. The escalators that had long since stopped moving. Even the food court we'd passed earlier had once been filled with people.

"Do you think the world will ever return to normal again?"

"...Well... yeah, of course." Alan smiled wryly.

Otherwise, what would be the point of surviving all this time, right?

These words were left unspoken.

Now, even walking through a mall meant wondering what was waiting around the next corner. That contrast in reality back to when life had been normal, was too cruel to bear.

Quiet footsteps, as we walked.

"I hope it does," Teucer added eventually, his voice quieter than the rest. But all of us caught it.

I looked at them from behind.

Children, I thought. They shouldn't have to worry about any of this. Civilisation had been pushed to the brink because of the Z-Virus. In three months, the damage to Eden had been severe, almost irreversible at this point. When society restarts, who would be left to inherit the next generation?

I found myself thinking about the government. Were they still functioning? Were there still people sitting behind desks somewhere, trying to coordinate rescue efforts and distribute supplies? How many districts had already fallen? How many people were still waiting for help that would never come?

"You know..."

Nadia suddenly spoke up.

"I... I might know something about that... the government, I mean." she added.

I stared at her for a moment.

"You know something?" Alan asked while moving.

Nadia nodded.

"Before I met everyone... an official approached me."

The others turned towards her.

"Because I was an Awakened."

We were halfway to spiral staircase now.

"He told me there were others," she continued. "Said I should join them, and promised many things..."

"Sounds... shady." Maki remarked.

"I thought that too. So I was skeptical immediately. You know, it's one of those movies where people like us get experimented on..." Nadia laughed quietly.

"Anyway... they were trying to recruit me and another boy. It was some kind of initiative that they had just started. They wanted to gather Awakened together to help the army."

"...We all know you didn't join. What happened then?" Teucer asked.

"...Nadia?"

Her expression darkened. It seemed like a bad memory.

She looked down at her hands.

"The first one appeared. I had to run."

The first one. From that context, it was probably one of those... A mutant zombie.

""""...""""

"After that... I lost contact with them."

"So... that's when you met us," Maki breathed in deeply.

"Yeah."

The kids all fell silent.

"I've... always felt guilty about it."

Her voice became smaller.

"Because if I hadn't run... if I hadn't led everyone into that situation..."

"It's not your fault." Teucer suddenly cut in, surprising everyone.

His eyes met Alan's.

"...It's not anybody's fault. Leah was..."

Teucer tightened his grip around his metal rod.

His words hung in the air.

Alan eventually broke the silence.

"We can't change what happened."

We were now standing before a dried-up fountain. A few meters beyond that was the staircase.

Alan looked at Nadia, a strong conviction seemed to rest in his gaze.

"But we can decide what happens next."

Maki nodded.

"We stay together."

"...Yeah," Nadia whispered.

Teucer gave a small nod.

"Obviously."

A faint smile appeared on Alan's face.

"Once we get our powers back," He said firmly, "things will be different."

His eyes settled on the spiral staircase leading upwards.

"This is it, we'll head up to the highest floor."

We moved towards the stairs. The lifts were nearby with their doors shut, but nobody suggested using them. Not that they would be in service. Even if they still worked, I had no intention of stepping into a metal box in a building full of infected. Recalling a close encounter once, I saw them simply as murder boxes in a zombie apocalypse.

Alan took the first step up. The others followed, our torchlights casting disjointed beams across the worn steps and metal railing. The atrium was still receiving some natural light from the glass above, but as we've already moved to the far end of the mall, it no longer reached us fully. The corners were already swallowed in deeper shadows, leaving our scattered torchlights to pick out whatever was directly in front of us.

Each beam moved independently as we climbed, briefly illuminating a face, a section of railing or another few steps before shifting elsewhere.

I brought up the rear, keeping my eyes on the darkness beyond those patches of light.

Floor by floor, we climbed.

The first floor. The second. We were accompanied only by the sound of our footsteps and our breathing.

By the time we reached the third floor, I had started to think that the mall had truly been cleared out by the noise outside.

Then—

CRASH!

The sound of shattering glass exploded through the atrium.

Everyone froze and, almost in unison, looked up to where the sound had come from.

High above us, fragments of glass rained down from the ceiling above the atrium. What little daylight remained outside filtered through it, illuminating the open space below. And something had fallen through it.

Something large. A dark shape was falling through the open atrium. We barely had time to react before it crashed down into the centre of the mall. It smashed through the remnants of the gaming event stage below, sending pieces of metal and broken panels flying across the atrium. The impact echoed through the entire building.

We froze on the third-floor staircase, staring down at the thing that had just fallen from above.

"What the fuck is that!" Teucer leaned in closer to the edge of the stairs for a look.

For a few seconds, it didn't move. Its body lay crumpled in the middle of the ruined gaming event stage, surrounded by broken panels and scattered debris. Then its fingers twitched. One of its legs jerked violently, followed by a wet, guttural groan.

It was a person. No... a creature.

Slowly, it began to move. Its torso pushed itself off the wreckage, bones cracking as it struggled back onto its feet. Its body seemed almost unsteady from the fall.

The creature was a figure with no head.

Instead, two thick strands of intestines hung from the place where its neck should have been, slowly writhing like grotesque tentacles. Its arms were the same, long trails of flesh that dragged against the ground before lifting themselves, each ending in jagged shards of hardened bone.

Teucer stared down at it.

"What the hell... is that a new mutant?!"

Alan backed away.

"Go, keep going up!"

"Shit!"

As the kids panicked and climbed the stairs even more hurriedly, I caught a glimpse of the mutant zombie.

It raised one of its twisted limbs, the bone at its tip scraped against the floor.

"Faster!"

We continued up the stairs, catching occasional glimpses of the mutant as if to check its position relative to ours. 

"Guys... the zombies..." Maki gulped.

"They're coming back!"

Taking a high vantage view from the stairs, we saw movement.

From the shattered windows of the mall's main entrance, the sound of movement multiplied.

A swarm of infected. The dead were here to shop.

All of them came straight towards the sound the mutant zombie had made.

Most were slow enough that we could keep ahead of them. But if the mutant brings all of them up here...

"Hey!"

Then Maki looked back and cried out. Her face went pale.

"That one's fast!"

From the second floor, there was another infected.

It was thinner than the others, its body almost unnaturally lean. Its limbs were long and tightly drawn against its frame, with swollen muscles bulging beneath patches of torn skin. Its head hung slightly forward, its jaw hanging open as it rushed towards the staircase in a mad dash like a rabid hound released from its leash.

Surely. It's another mutant zombie.

"Sprinter!" Teucer shouted a name for it.

The Sprinter was already closing the distance.

We hurried up the stairs to the fifth, glancing backwards every few steps.

Its footsteps were getting louder. Faster.

"Go, go, go!" Alan shouted.

The girls were falling behind. Especially Maki, who was the last of the group ahead of me. She pushed herself up the stairs, her breathing becoming more ragged with every step. I pulled her along, but she couldn't keep up.

"M-My l'heggss...!"

"Stop and you die!"

I looked back.

From below, the tentacle mutant seemed to have already reached the staircase. It wasn't climbing it like we were. One of its long, fleshy limbs swung upwards before the hardened bone at its tip punched straight through the next step.

Crack!

It pulled itself up. Another limb stabbed into the step above.

Crack!

It was using the stairs like a ladder, piercing each step with those grotesque bone-tipped tendrils and dragging its entire body upwards.

It had already covered the distance.

One of its fleshy limbs swung towards us, the hardened bone at its tip poised to pierce through Teucer's chest.

But he reacted quickly.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Teucer then exhaled directly, quickly at the approaching tendril. A stream of freezing mist poured from his mouth, spreading across the mutant's flesh. Frost rapidly crawled along the limb, coating it in white until the entire tendril froze solid.

"F...uck... off!" In between strained breaths, Teucer kicked the frozen tendril with all his strength.

The brittle limb snapped backwards, dragging the mutant's entire body with it. Its grip gave way, and the creature tumbled down the staircase. It crashed into the mass of zombies gathered below. Several infected were crushed beneath its weight, their bodies collapsing with sickening cracks as the tentacle mutant slammed into the ground. The surrounding zombies stumbled away from the impact, only for more to crowd around the fallen creature almost immediately.

"Incoming!"

But of course, this wasn't the only mutant.

Trouble just kept coming in waves. The Sprinter was also on the staircase.

Its body lowered itself like a predator preparing to pounce.

Maki froze.

I grit my teeth and threw the steel rod in my hand like a javelin, hoping to stop it. 

But the Sprinter twisted its body to the side. The steel rod flew past its shoulder and clattered against the railing.

"Damn it!"

The creature didn't even slow down.

It launched itself upwards, straight towards Maki.

"Urk!"

Her eyes widened. The flames covering one half of her face suddenly burned brighter.

Maki was trying to use her ability, Fire Mask. But...

"Aaahhh, my skin!" Maki cried out painfully.

There was no choice, I had to—

"—Move!"

It was Alan. He threw himself back down the stairs, his fist igniting with a thin coat of fire.

The Sprinter lunged, and Alan met it head-on.

His fist slammed into its chest.

The impact sent the creature stumbling backwards, its feet skidding across the steps as flames crawled over its torso.

"Graahhh!" It shrieked out violently, as if the fire had overstimulated its senses.

"Ugh...!" 

But that attack came with a cost. Alan's fingers were charred. He leaned back against the railing, panting deeply while recovering with trembling fingers.

Maki didn't waste this opportunity.

"...Sshh...shit..."

Holding back her tears, she grabbed the steel railing beside her and pressed the burning half of her face against it. The metal began to glow. A sharp hiss filled the stairwell as the heat spread through the railing. The steel softened beneath her cheek, sagging under its own weight.

Maki pulled away and grabbed the weakened section with both hands. With a grunt, she wrenched it free.

The Sprinter was already recovering below us.

I hurled a hammer down at it. It struck the mutant across the chest and bounced away, barely slowing it down.

"Come on!"

The Sprinter shook itself and started climbing again.

"Die!"

Maki swung the heated length of steel down the stairs.

It struck the mutant across the shoulder with a sickening crunch, forcing it back just as it tried to lunge towards us again.

The Sprinter recoiled violently. Its entire body twisted away from the heated steel, as though the brief contact had caused it far more pain than the impact itself. Flames still crawled across its chest from Alan's earlier punch, and the mutant desperately tried to escape the heat.

It stumbled backwards and its heel caught the edge of the landing, causing the Sprinter to topple backwards over it.

"Grahhh!"

It disappeared from view.

A second later, a distant crash echoed up from the ground floor.

We didn't wait to find out if it would get back up.

"The fifth floor! Just get to the fifth floor!" 

Alan's voice came from only a few steps ahead, sharp and urgent as he pushed onwards up the stairs.

Below us, the cacophony of snarls and groans echoed through the stairwell, growing louder as the zombies began to follow.