Roger ducked into the room with his rifle raised. It was a large administration office, with rows of desks that were fully equipped for a staff of secretaries and accountants. Papers were scattered all over and chairs overturned as if people had left in a hurry.
Peter continued to the next door, which was closed but unlocked. He swung open the door and silently jumped into a room that was much more spartan, with two metal desks and a few chairs. Several phones were arranged on a plain metal table. The green-gray furniture and lack of any discriminating features except for a few pinup pictures and a girly calendar suggested a maintenance office. On one wall was a large map of the mall, with pin flags and scribbling over an acetate that covered the drawing. At the other end of the room was a huge electrical panel with circuit breakers and an entire series of master controls all keyed by a number code to another map of the mall showing electrical installations.
On the wall behind Peter was a large blackboard and two metal cabinets. The open one contained all sorts of tools, both manual and electric. There were circuit testers, walkie-talkie units and several enormous rings containing hundreds of keys, which were also colored and number-coded.
“The keys to the kingdom,” Roger said in awe as he stepped behind Peter, who had grabbed one of the rings.
They scurried back into the hallway, two kids anxious to try a new toy. Roger picked up the keys and tried several in the doorknob of what looked like the corner office. The door opened onto a beautifully plush hallway, carpeted in deep rust pile with mahogany paneling leading to the executive suites, obviously the headquarters of the gigantic mall.
The labyrinth of interconnecting offices were all decorated in chrome and leather and highly polished wood. Peter and Roger wandered in and out finding themselves in the secretaries’ anterooms and then ending up in connecting conference rooms. They would each take a different path and end up meeting each other again. The offices were all designer-decorated with huge paintings and sculptures and massive picture windows looking out to the woods beyond the parking lot.
The troopers finally reached a room that was not approachable through either the locked interior or corridor doors. The brass nameplate bore the inscription “C. J. Porter—President.”
Roger moved to the corridor, where he joined Peter. They were very near the end of the hall, and the brightly lit shopping area was visible, although they could only make out a small section.
They realized they were in the seat of power—but they didn’t realize how much power. Porter was the president of Amalgamated Industries, and the shopping malls were only a tiny part of their clothing firms, fabric mills and department stores, which were spread across the nation. That he had chosen this gigantic out-of-the-way mall for his headquarters was only one example of the eccentricity of the brilliant, powerful billionaire.
The balcony on which Peter and Roger stood was railed off against the open drop to the first floor. Across the vast atrium below they could see the opposite balcony. On the far side, only two storefronts could be seen, and both were closed off by gates.
Just as if they were about to embark across a minefield in Southeast Asia, the two troopers realized the danger inherent in their actions. They looked at each other steadily and then moved forward, each clinging to the opposite walls in the corridor.
As they reached the mall proper, they slowly and carefully peered around their respective corners.
From their viewpoint, they could see that the upper balcony totally surrounded the vast interior of the building. At several points, bridges spanned from one side to the other. Almost as if they were in a marketplace, little shops of all types ran along the entire length of the balcony. At each end there was a spectacular arched entrance to a large department store, gates to the temples of plenty. Both stores—Porter’s and Stacey’s—were part, of course, of Amalgamated’s empire.
Most of the stores were gated, but a few seemed open. The gates to Porter’s, however, were barred and locked. Here and there tall trees reached up toward the skylights in the second-story ceiling, desperately searching for the natural light.
The living dead were conspicuous by their absence. None of them appeared on the upper balcony, although the men could sense their diabolical presence.
The troopers moved slowly and quietly to the railing and then crouched to peer down through the bars of the rail. Below, the sight was even more spectacular.
It was a wonderland of consumer’s delights: stores of every type offered gaudy displays of items. There were clothing, appliances, photography equipment, audio and video outlets, even a sporting goods store with weapons in the window. Besides a modern supermarket, there were gourmet shops and natural organic food stores. A bookstore, record store, real estate agency, bank, novelty shop and gift shop were next. Each was shiny and new looking, begging the passing shopper to stop in and take a look. At each end—as in the upper concourse—like the main altars at the end of a cathedral, stood the mammoth two-story department stores, symbols of a consumer society.
The layout of the mall reminded Peter of the time that he was in Mexico, except that all the shops were outside rather than inside. Down the center of the polished marble floor were little stalls. This was the trading place of the peasants of the consumer society, those who couldn’t afford the walls, but who were just as anxious to peddle their wares. Situated among the gardens and park benches were a tobacco specialist; a jewelry stall with imitation gold necklaces, rings and bracelets; a small photography portrait stall, where in happier times mothers took their scrubbed and crying children for their first picture. There were also restaurants and snack bars to feed the exhausted, tired and hungry shoppers and give them energy to buy more and more.
There was an arcade with coin-operated machines selling everything from children’s toys to blood pressure readings. Upon a large turntable, designed to spin, but now still, a late model car was on exhibit. Other turntable displays showed futuristic household appliances, many way out of the range of the typical shopper. But, even though they were unable to purchase those time-saving devices, the people still liked to gawk and fantasize that one day they might be able to.
To Roger and Peter, who weren’t usually ponderous thinkers, the familiar images appeared as an archaeological discovery, symbolizing the gods and customs of a civilization now gone.
But like any civilization, there were remnants, fossils that had been unearthed, and they trod lightly below in the aisles of the great cathedral. As the troopers, so removed now from any normal circumstances that their perspective had been distorted, moved toward their treasures, they were unaware that twenty pairs of vacantly staring eyes were watching them.
6
The two big men, in their military regalia, gazed out across the sprawling mall.
“It’s Christmastime down there, buddy,” Roger said with wonder.
“Fat city, brother. How we gonna work it?”
“We get into the department stores up here,” Roger plotted. “They prob’ly have their own escalators inside.”
“Let’s check those keys,” Peter suggested.
At this point, the two troopers had a narrow-minded objective—get as many supplies as possible. Neither of them stopped to think about what would fit into the small helicopter, which barely held its human passengers. They greedily headed toward the administration corridor and moved quickly down the hall toward the maintenance office.
As they left the balcony, a zombie staggered out of one of the open stores several yards away from where they had been standing. It was followed by a second creature, a female without an arm. Steadily, menacingly, they moved along the balcony toward the open corridor.
In the maintenance office, the troopers compared the keys against the coded map on the wall.
“Seventy-two . . . U and D,” Roger called out as he pored over the map. “Here it is . . .”
He and Peter checked the keys and Peter found the corresponding numbers.
“Here,�
�� he said, holding it out toward Roger.
“Let’s hope it’s right.”
“Look here,” Peter said, pointing to the map. “These numbers must all be locks. Front, side, back outside, must be like loading docks. But what are these?”
He pointed to several numbered spots that seemed to be within the big Porter’s department store, which they were studying.
“Washroom?” Roger guessed. “Equipment? . . . I dunno.”
While Peter still stared at the map, Roger moved off toward the electrical control panel.
“I guess these gotta be the gates,” Peter surmised.
Roger wandered around the room cheerfully. He noted something on the control panel with a smile and turned toward Peter.
“How about a little music?”
“What?” Peter asked, totally taken aback by the frivolity of the statement.
The big trooper moved up behind his blond partner. One of the controls on the panel was marked “Music Tape.” The master switch was in the off position. Another switch was marked “Floor Exhibits” and a series of others were marked “ESCALATORS.” There were dozens of master switches, which were all in the off mode.
“Power switches,” Peter said to himself.
“The music might cover the noise we make,” Roger said practically.
“Hit ’em all,” Peter said magnanimously. “Might as well have power in everything. We might need it.”
With a gleam in his eye, Roger hit all the switches one at a time.
Throughout the mall, the dull, droning sound of Muzak poured out through the loudspeakers.
Upstairs, the curious sound reached a startled Fran. She snapped the rifle into her hands, ready to fire, but she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She had been standing, one ear cocked to the strange music below, just inside the storage area. Now she stepped into the fire stair and tried to see through the darkness. The sounds of the insipid music drifted up toward her.
“Stephen,” she cried, leaning into the storage area again. “Stephen!”
His mind still fuzzy from his long-needed rest, Steve roused himself. At first he thought he had been dreaming about the music (which sounded unbelievably like what he used to hear in his dentist’s office) and the frantic call of Fran’s. He opened his eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t place the big, cold room filled with cartons. Then he remembered and jumped up to find Fran.
He found her just inside the storage area, her eyes straining in the darkness, the rifle held to her breast. She looked so tiny in comparison to the big rifle, and she was shuddering with fear. Steve led her into the larger room and closed the door.
“Where the hell are those guys?” he asked, still half-asleep and rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is going on around here?”
Fran had calmed down sufficiently to try to explain what had transpired while Steve was asleep.
“You mean they’re actually going to raid the department store? What do they expect to do with stuff from there?”
“That’s just it,” she told him, a look of fear in her eyes. “It’s as if they’ve lost all perspective. We just wanted to stop here for some food and rest, or so that’s what I thought. But they act like they’re on some kind of secret mission. I swear, they’re acting like a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers!”
Steve reached over and pulled Fran close to him.
“Don’t worry,” he told her in a voice that he hoped sounded calm. “They’re not that crazy.”
“Then what are we going to do? They said if they didn’t come back to leave without them . . . how long should we wait?” She collapsed in a heap, crying and shaking at the same time.
All Steve could do was hold her to him tightly. He knew that if he tried to explain anything, he would break down as well.
Meanwhile, on the first floor of the mall, it looked as if a giant hand had turned on its own special mechanical toy. Only it wasn’t a toy—it was an entire shopping center. The automobile turntable started spinning; the great escalators began to move up and down. Two of the living dead, caught just starting up a stalled escalator, fell and rolled down as the mechanical steps began to move.
As if it were a carnival come alive, lights blinked on in the exhibits, mechanical window displays began their robotlike motions. The zombies, bothered by the Muzak, wandered about the floor in increased confusion. Some of them swatted ineffectually at the moving exhibits.
Disturbed by the movement, the tropical birds housed in the floor-to-ceiling cages woke up, chirping and squawking for their feed.
In a pet shop, puppies and kittens in a window display whined and scrambled over one another in fright at the noise, the motion and the tottering creatures.
All that was missing was the real-life action of human shoppers. On one of the floor exhibits, a rear-projection movie started.
A narrator spoke in a friendly voice: “. . . and for a price that anyone can afford, you can live in these luxurious new homes by Brandon. Fully electric, central air . . .”
The newly distracted zombies started strutting around at a quicker pace, bumping into each other and the moving displays. Some tried to return the way they’d come in, but they only bounced off the glass door. The one who had been circling endlessly had fallen to the ground, and his head was wedged between the ground and the door, preventing anyone else from entering or leaving.
In the maintenance office, the troopers readied themselves for their raid. Peter secured the vital key ring to his utility belt, and they moved out.
Roger’s mind was a million miles away as he moved through the doorway and into the corridor. He was still lightheaded from the thought of all those wonderful goodies waiting for him downstairs. He was totally unprepared for his head-on meeting with one of the zombies from the balcony. Startled, he ducked back into the room. The zombie, blindly reaching out with clutching hands, rounded the corner and appeared in the doorway. With precision accuracy, Peter raised his gun and fired two shots cleanly through the creature’s head.
On the top of the fire stair, Fran jumped as the sound of the shots reverberated through the enormous mall.
“Jesus Christ,” Steve screamed, grabbing the rifle from the petrified woman. “They’re maniacs.”
He looked long and hard at Fran. He was torn between staying here with her and charging downstairs to see what was going on. Fran needed protection, but he also needed to prove to her, to himself, and to those two macho supermen downstairs that he could join the battle.
Fran saw the indecision in his eyes.
“Stephen, don’t go down there,” she pleaded. “Stephen, please!”
“It’s all right,” he said calmly, starting to make his way down the stairs.
In the corridor of the administration offices below, Roger and Peter were stepping over the corpse.
“What da ya think?” Roger asked as the second zombie, the armless female, came into his view. He fired his weapon and the creature fell in a heap. As if nothing had happened, he continued his conversation.
“Bag it or try for it?” he asked his comrade.
“You game?” Peter asked.
Roger nodded, and the two men ran down the hall toward the mall. With their rifles poised, they seemed like commandos on an important raid.
All that was missing was the blare of the trumpets as Roger and Peter charged into battle. The enemy wandered around the first floor, attracted by the sound but confused by the sudden intrusion of the noise into their quiet domain. In misguided, staggering strides, they walked this way and that, glazed, vacant eyes passing by the stores and shops with their glittering array of goodies.
Several of the zombies walked toward the escalators, which in their dormant state had been easy to negotiate. But now, the moving escalators tossed the zombies this way and that. Some of them tried going up the down escalators, while those few creatures who moved onto the up escalator fell against each other from the movement. They seemed like tumbling pins in a bowling alley.
<
br /> One of the zombies that fell on the escalator was carried upward despite its awkward position. Another managed to keep its balance by holding onto the handrail.
And unbeknownst to Roger and Peter, several creatures had begun to move up the steps of a stationary stairway that ran from the first to the second floor and was located at the other end of the mall from the administration offices.
Meanwhile, a sweating, nervous Steve was cautiously making his way down the steps of the fire stair. His rifle ready, his palms dripping, he tried to control his jittery nerves. Fran looked anxiously from the top landing.
Several hundred yards away, Roger and Peter were barreling toward the huge gate that locked off the entrance to Porter’s. The two troopers came to a crashing halt. Four or five zombies were staggering their way down a side concourse toward the troopers. They were about three hundred feet away.
Roger kept his rifle leveled off in the direction of the creatures while Peter tried the lock at the middle of the big roll gate.
Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead as he fumbled with the keys and finally found the proper one. When it sank with a click into the receptacle that was right at the floor and the tumbler turned successfully, Peter sighed in relief.
“All right!” he yelled to his friend.
Creeping toward them, however, was the creature that had fallen on the escalator. His ghoulish companion, the one who was able to ride the whole way without falling, was also approaching the two unsuspecting troopers.
Suddenly, to Roger’s surprise, the head of the standing zombie became visible from Roger’s perspective. He raised his gun and aimed for the creature’s forehead.
Peter tried to lift the roll gate but it wouldn’t move. It was still locked!
“You bastard,” Peter screamed in frustration.
“What?” Roger asked, his attention focused on the approaching ghouls.
“Still locked . . . on the side,” Peter said, pointing to another assembly. He moved to the far side of the gate. The same key fit, and Peter repeated the process.
Dawn of the Dead Page 9
