The Mall

by Bryant Delafosse

  But maybe they were already outside. Without him.

  His only hope was to get back to the theater and catch them-- if it wasn’t already too late.

  3

  Chance was just thinking that they could have planned their getaway slightly better, when darkness fell on him and Jesse. A loud definitive CLUNK came from the set of exit doors just within a few yards of them and he could feel a sharp vibration through the heels of his shoes as the locking bolts built into the doors shot into their corresponding holes in the floor.

  Jesse threw himself against one of the doors and recoiled in pain as it remained immobile and unyielding. “These bastards just locked. Right in front of us,” he exclaimed, trying another for good measure. He spun around, as if expecting to catch a pursuer.

  Chance looked over his shoulder as well, thinking to himself, “These people are serious about a little graffiti.”

  But there was no one in the darkness.

  For all he knew, the Mall might have been completely empty or filled with armed men with Russian accents, killing Americans for sport.

  Chance recalled that earlier after riding the tram through several stops with several other passengers, the car had finally emptied, leaving them alone and giving them what they pre-determined were a total of four and a half minutes between stations to do their work.

  It was Jesse’s idea to spray the tiny almost invisible camera lens hidden in the corner of the car, giving them total anonymity. Jesse did most of the work. As evidence for Jesse’s “friends,” Chance snapped pix with his cell phone, while keeping an eye on the time. He had given Jesse a one minute warning. At which point, Jesse tossed the empty yellow spray paint can beneath one of the seats along with empty shell of its red brother, zipped up the backpack, and hefted it to his shoulder. He joined Chance at the doors, grabbing the handrails beside him and steeling himself against the gentle automated breaking of the robotic car.

  “You think anyone’ll be waiting at the station?” Chance asked, craning his neck to try and see down the tunnel.

  Jesse shrugged and tried to look nonplussed. “If there are, we’ll just give them the old ‘How do you like that? What some kids will do nowadays, huh?’” He gave Chance an uncertain smile that attempted to be confident, but failed.

  When the car stopped, they both relaxed slightly at the sight of the empty yellow sector tram station. They had taken the complete circuit, ending up back at the same place they had started from.

  They stood side by side at the closed doors, waiting patiently for the car to settle to a stop.

  “What’s the plan?” Chance asked finally. It was the first time the word “plan” had been uttered between them since this whole debacle had begun.

  “Please step clear of the doors,” the recorded announcement stated, repeating the same phrase in various other languages. An electronic bell tolled and the doors parted smoothly, both boys leaping out and striding casually with as much control as they could muster.

  “We better head for the nearest exit,” Jesse said with an amused snuffle, glancing back over his shoulder at the results of their handiwork. Letting loose a hysterical hoot of laughter, he exclaimed, “Oh shit, lookit that mess!” and broke into a sprint down the corridor toward the up escalator back into the Mall.

  Chance rushed after. “What happened to staying here overnight like we planned?”

  “After what we just did?” Jesse had scoffed. “I’m not hanging around.”

  Now, here they both stood at the nearest exit to the scene of the crime, and they had found themselves locked inside. The closest means of escape blocked to them.

  Methodically, Jesse pushed on each of the doors in sequence, hoping he might get lucky on one. Finally, he whipped around, Chance’s own irrational fear reflected in his eyes. “You think they know?”

  “Get real, dude,” Chance snapped, feeling the first inkling of fear but for a reason greater than the prospect of being captured for vandalism. “There’s something else going on here.”

  4

  Albert was on the can when the lights went out, frustrated at his bowels for copping out on him during the process of searching for the two punks he knew were responsible for defacing Mall property.

  “Shit!” he growled into the darkness, tucking the copy of Breakfast of Champions that he had been reading under his arm.

  He had already finished his business long ago and was now just using the privacy to read a few pages before going back on the floor to resume his search. The pizza he’d eaten earlier had done a number on his stomach. Lately, it seemed nothing he ate seemed to sit well. It was almost as if his stomach had become a hostile entity.

  Wait, a voice told him. Wait for the emergency lights to come on.

  Pulling his pants up and buckling his belt, he took a deep breath and relaxed. His hand found his radio and raised it to his mouth. He depressed the button to speak, but there was no sound. Tapping it a couple of times against his leg, he tried it again. Nothing.

  It was eerily quiet and his mind began to wander to the section he’d just been reading.

  In the book, this writer, Kilgore Trout, had written a science fiction story entitled Now It Can Be Told, in which the main character was the only one in the world capable of free will. Everyone else was a machine, built to do a specific task and was compelled to do whatever they had been designed to do over and over again. He was the only one with the ability to do whatever he chose.

  Something about that idea struck a chord with Albert Lynch.

  All those shoppers, spending their easy-won income on disposable goods, proudly displaying their brand name purses and shoes, going home to their condos, so that they can plug into their televisions and wait to be programmed by rich whore corporations.

  Weren’t they, after all, machines? Machines of meat?

  What about him? He wasn’t egotistical enough to think that he was the only one on the planet with free will, but he was more enlightened than most. That was a given.

  So, what if it was true that along with everyone else he was simply an automaton, built for a specific purpose, slave to the function he’d been built to complete?

  If this was true, what was his ultimate function?

  The answer pressed in close to him like unwanted attention.

  He heard the shuffle of a shoe a few feet away.

  All the muscles in Albert’s body tensed. The book pressed between his arm and his ribs squeezed out and dropped to the floor with a thwack!

  “Who’s there?” he called, trying and failing to sound authoritative.

  Albert?

  His mouth snapped shut. He felt his legs go numb beneath him.

  Alll-bert Lamia?

  His hand dropped to the Faze-Wand in his belt.

  Who’s there?

  Rising carefully, ignoring the tingling of his sleeping legs, Albert attempted to peer over the edge of the enclosed stall. It was completely dark.

  In a shaky voice that only succeeded in making him aware of just how scared he actually was, Albert said: “When I get out of here, I’m gonna…”

  “Fulfill your function, Lamia,” Albert heard a strange voice say. Even the elevator’s voice had been programmed to sound human, but this one was not even remotely so. This was a voice devoid of all inflection.

  The emergency lights flickered to life on the wall just above Albert, revealing the dead little girl, half her face torn away, staring at him from the far corner of the restroom. She stared at him with accusatory eyes, her flesh the bluish-white of meat that all life has abandoned--aside from the tiny devouring worms, which dripped in small squirming masses from the torn holes in her body.

  Her mouth formed the word: “You,” but no sound reached his ears.

  The truth that struck him was as unpleasant, as pungent as the odor rising from the corpse standing before him.

  The little girl was dead. He had run her down with his car.

  He averted his eyes and cringed back into the s
tall, closing and locking the door.

  He recalled now, hitting his brakes and waiting for her to rise to her feet; perhaps give him a look of shock and fear and finally rush away, never to commit the same stupid mistake again of running across a busy road.

  But she never did.

  His heart racing in his chest, feeling somehow distant from the proceedings, Albert had looked around the street before him and realized that he was all alone aside from the disappearing taillights of the white van that had fatefully blocked his view. That van. Wasn’t the driver just as culpable, if not more so, than he? The driver was the murderer, not him!

  Albert was a victim of circumstance, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  And yet, no one had seen what he had just done.

  Putting his car in reverse, he had backed the car up, feeling a slight resistance. A drag. He resisted the urge to look, but saw the mass from the corner of his eye.

  He turned the wheel as far to the left as possible and pulled out into the empty road, driving slow and casual, glancing back in his rear view mirror only once. Shade from a broad oak tree above slightly obscured the shape. From a distance, the tiny form simply looked like a fallen branch or a perhaps a stray dog.

  Roadkill.

  Perhaps she was just unconscious, he had thought. She’ll probably stand right up and rush home with a scratch or two, maybe a bruise.

  When he got to the parking garage, he walked slowly around the front of the car, in a secluded spot away from the heavy traffic of others. His flashlight revealed the corner of the front license plate had been folded back slightly, the bumper slightly dented. Not bad.

  Albert dropped to the floor next to the fallen paperback and lifted his knees to his chest, withdrawing as far away from the stall door, where two small feet approached.

  The lock on the door turned of its own accord and swung slowly open.

  Unable to look away, Albert peered up at the little girl, the tattered remains of her skull now revealing the truth beneath. He could see the shiny metal of her skull piece and the slow blue glow of her eye sensors.

  Albert’s hand fell to the paperback on the floor next to him and looked down.

  Now it can be told.

  Machines! They’re all machines!

  It wasn’t murder, then. You can’t kill a machine.

  Fulfill your function, Lamia!

  My name is Albert.

  “No,” the dead girl (machine) said in a flat voice that was not the slightest bit human. “You are as I have created you to be. Go forth and fulfill your function.”

  5

  “Where is everybody going, Mommy?”

  “Quiet, Cora,” Lara hissed, pushing her back into the middle of the clothing carousel where they had taken refuge.

  The small group of ten people marched past them headed in the opposite direction. One woman shrieked hysterically at one of the two security guards. “I cain’t find my chile! She still inna store! Jes’ lemme find her!”

  “Don’t worry about your daughter, ma’am,” the security guard replied, guiding her firmly after the rest of the group. “Everybody’s being escorted to the nearest exit. She’s probably waiting for you this very moment outside.”

  Lara felt her heart skip a beat.

  “Please move toward the main exit to the north!” the second security guard leading the group yelled from between raised palms. He had been repeating the phrase over and over for the last few minutes, his deep voice resounding in the unnatural silence of the empty Sears store. They had earlier ducked inside the store when she had heard another small group coming up behind them. She had chosen the first hiding place she could find.

  Why did it feel so familiar?

  Then almost as if prompted, the memory came back to her. She had often used this sort of carousel to play hide and seek with her father as a child while her mother shopped.

  But it had only been a game to her.

  From her vantage point, she would watch her father as he grew more and more agitated, the urgency in his voice growing, that elusive emotion slowly edging into his voice as he called her name.

  Anything to hear that sound in his voice. Emotion.

  Then just at the height of his anxiety, she would sneak up behind him and reveal herself. He would get so angry at times that he would actually spank her, but it was never very hard.

  Even in his discipline, the passion was missing, she found herself thinking.

  Afterward he would always hold her hand--her little hand in his big protective one--and she would feel a little of what she rarely felt from the man.

  At this newly unearthed thought, a sudden chill settled about her. For a moment, she was eight years old again, alone in her aunt’s house, waiting in the dark for the sound of that key in the lock.

  Why did she leave me there? Lara thought. What could she have been thinking? I was only eight.

  “Mommy?”

  The sound of her daughter’s voice broke the spell and for a moment, she was completely disoriented, staring at the multi-colored dresses around her in confusion.

  “Not another word,” Lara hissed into Cora’s ear. She parted the dresses carefully and peered outside. She could hear the voice of the security agent fading in the distance.

  She swept the clothing aside with both hands like a diver parting water and helped Cora back out to the floor. Taking her hand, she walked briskly out into the shadowy aisle, a dim auger of brown light spilling up the floor from the Mall entrance they had come from.

  Cora followed after her whining, arms in the air. “Pick me up. Pick me up.”

  “No, Cora, you’re getting too big for that.” The five-year-old hadn’t asked to be picked up for over two months now. They had made such progress in that department and now this.

  Cora was sniffling now, on the edge of a crying fit.

  “Don’t you dare, Coraline,” Lara said, spinning on her and looking her in the eye. “You’re a big girl. Now c’mon.”

  Stepping outside the store, Lara took her by the hand and started down the empty corridor, peeking through the opening of one of the shops she passed--a trendy shoe store--and judged it too dark to risk entering. With Cora in tow, she found a Radio Shack a few shops down, and glancing over her shoulder furtively, snagged a flashlight from the display.

  Cora gave her wide-eyed look of confusion, opened her mouth then closed it again.

  “We’re just borrowing it, hon,” Lara explained, depressing the button below the handle once, twice, three times. “Shit,” she hissed, and returned to the display. She turned back and retrieved a combination weather radio/flashlight from another display that read, “Are You Ready for the Coming Storm?”

  “What the hell?” she murmured in confusion, before realizing that there was a hand-crank on the side of the unit. Giving a few turns, the bulb glowed dimly like a half-dozing firefly. Flipping the switch to the off position, she handed the light to Cora and said, “I need you to turn this handle as many times as you can, as quietly as you can. Can you do that for me?”

  Once Cora took the flashlight hesitantly from her, Lara started back outside, thought twice, and grabbed a second one from the display. “C’mon,” she said, taking her by the arm.

  Cora continued standing in place, the flashlight held motionlessly at her side. “Mommy, why are we going in a different direction than everyone else?”

  “We can’t go with them, because we have to find your brother.”

  “What if he’s with them?”

  It was a thought that had already occurred to Lara, but knew she couldn’t alarm Cora by acknowledging the possibility. So, as she often did when faced with a well-posed question from one of her two children--often times wise beyond their years--Lara did what came naturally to her.

  She bull-shitted and hoped that her passion could sell the lie.

  “He would never have left the Mall as long as he knew we were still inside,” Lara replied matter-of-factly, tugging her daughter to
ward the corridor.

  “He left the theater without us,” the five-year-old countered.

  Damn these smart children. She was right, though. What if Owen had left the Mall?

  “Cora, we can’t take the chance that he’ll be left behind by himself after we leave.” Though, if he was, it would serve him right, Lara thought, the simple unadulterated maliciousness of the thought shocking her. She instantly regretted thinking it, considering the possibility that they might have been evacuating the Mall for any number of reasons: gas leak, structural instability, maybe even terrorists. Knowing she couldn’t start getting hysterical without cause, she turned her attention back to Cora. “I want you to think, now, hon. Did Owen say anything to you about where he wanted to go?”

  Cora nibbled her lip as she considered. Her eyes lit up and she answered in a quiet voice, “He did say he wanted to go back to the E-Bot store.”

  Lara nodded and started outside again. “That’s here on this side, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, we’re in blue.”

  Lara knew the E-Bot store was on the ground floor, because they hadn’t gone to any of the stores on the upper levels. Most of the main stores were on the ground level. The smaller stores, independent and boutiques, were usually situated on the upper levels. Anchor stores—the big crowd-pleasers--were always strategically placed on the ends.

  Taking a furtive look outside, Lara took Cora by the hand and started toward the distant voice of the yelling security guard. As long as they were headed in the same direction as she was, she figured the best tactic would be to follow the crowd. There would be less of a chance of being questioned by other security agents if they were headed in the right direction anyway.

  “Not another word until Mommy tells you, okay?” She drew thumb and forefinger zipper-like across her lip, and Cora responded with a nod of understanding.

  Sticking to the shadows, she and Cora started up the corridor.

  6

  Owen tried calling the elevator car down but the button refused to light up at his touch. Taking a step back from the closed doors, he noticed the digital sign above the top edge scrolling a message composed of red dot letters: “Currently out of order.”