Authors: Bryant Delafosse
The man froze in a half crouch in the doorway of the Mercedes and raised the lip of his vest up just enough to reveal the handle of a handgun tucked into his black leather belt.
“Easy, killer,” he whispered, displaying a mouthful of bright white teeth, and one gold one.
He dropped down behind the wheel and gave one glance at Owen in the next seat.
The ten-year-old shoved the door open and swung out.
Chance stood just outside the door with hands on his hips, studying the man as he fished around beneath the dash.
“Let me understand this?
You have a gun and you’re still here?
Why don’t you just blast a front door for yourself?”
“Tried that,” the other replied grimly, pulling up the two colored wires out from beneath the console.
Taking a shiny red Swiss Army knife from his pocket, he began to whittle away the outside sheath of the wire.
“Who would have thought a department store would have bullet-proof glass.”
Chance snickered. “Damned near gave yourself an ass-ectomy, eh?”
The man peered up at Chance with dark deep-set eyes.
“You remind me of a cousin I used to have.”
“Let me guess,” Chance sighed.
“He was voted Ms Congeniality on his cell block?”
“For the record, the name is Dugan.”
He pressed the two exposed wires together between two fingers.
Silence.
“Yeah, much better than we could do, Toolie,” Chance cackled.
The man raised his eyebrows.
With a heavy sigh, he swung his legs out and stared for several long silent moments at the flatbed cart loaded with batteries.
“Doesn’t matter if they’re charged or not if the electrical system is fried.”
Dugan glanced behind him through the open passenger door at Owen.
He rose and folded his arms atop the roof and gazed down at the ten-year-old.
“Why would you think that?”
“The Bots.
The elevators.
The lights.
The signs.
Same reason why all the other machines are fried.
Why the building was locked down.”
“Okay, Genius,” Dugan asked with a smirk.
“What’s your theory?”
Owen shrugged and folded his arms across his chest.
“The Russians have taken over the world.”
“Got it,” Dugan snapped, rising and leaning up against the car.
From his pocket, he withdrew and unfolded a well-worn map.
He lifted his head toward the north, turned the map around in his hands, and finally gave a nod.
“Well, it’s been real, but I’m not waiting around to be thrown into the Gulag, if you know what I mean.”
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere where there are lots of cars and lots of chances to disprove that theory of yours, Short Round.”
Chance took the handle of shopping basket and tested the weight.
“No way am I pushing this one.
I’ll take the other one.”
“Sorry. No way,” Dugan shot back.
Refolding and replacing the map, he took a few steps toward the palette of batteries then cast a longing look at his basket of high-tech goodies.
He frowned, seemed to do a bit of calculating,
then
looked over at Chance.
“Okay, it’s like this.
You and you are doing the hauling.
That’s the deal.
So,
who’s
taking what can be worked out between the two or you, but I don’t want the little guy lagging behind just because he doesn’t have the leg strength to...”
“I’m not going,” Owen snapped, snatching the flashlight from the floor where he’d left it and taking a few steps backward.
“I’m going south to find my mom and sister.
Remember?”
Chance turned and stared at him in sudden confusion.
“You don’t even know for sure they’re in here!”
“That’s what the Bot told me!”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a Bot just try and force us to follow him to the North exit?
Don’t you get it, kid?
It was lying to you.”
“Bots can’t lie.”
Dugan scoffed.
“Did you buy into that corporate propaganda?
‘Bots can’t lie.’”
Giving Chance a gentle push aside, Dugan grabbed Owen by the front of his shirt and pushed him out ahead of them.
“Just to be safe, you just better stick with us, little dude.”
Owen stood immobile and watched as Dugan steered the shopping cart away from the Mercedes.
“C’mon,” Chance grumbled, seizing the handle of Owen’s flashlight and trying to drag him after.
Releasing the flashlight, Owen spun away and ran in the opposite direction.
“Hey,” Chance screamed.
“It’s his funeral,” Dugan grumbled.
“Let’s go.”
Chance ignored him, watching Owen disappear down the concourse.
“Fine.
Whatever.
Have a nice shopping experience and all that,” Dugan replied.
He took the handle of the flatbed and tugged it awkwardly behind him as he continued to muscle the shopping cart ahead of him.
Stepping from the frozen escalator, Simon cast the beam of his flashlight down into the blackened cavern.
Just behind him he could hear Cora diligently cranking her own flashlight.
Lara craned her neck to peer around him.
The central access to the subterranean level was in the direct center of the Mall.
From her vantage point just beneath the floor of the first level of the Mall, Lara could see only what the dim sunlight cast through the glass ceiling above provided; two pedestrian platforms stretching from east to west and north to south meeting at a traffic circle of sorts that surrounded the bank of escalators from where she stood.
A short wall separated each of the platforms on either side into halves, presumably to keep pedestrians from accidentally stepping into on-coming traffic.
Beyond the pool of natural light spilling down from above she could see absolutely nothing in the impenetrable darkness.
A tiny voice inside her asked to “please be let outside to play,” and for a moment, she thought it had been Cora making a dark joke that exceeded her years.
Simon cast a humorless look at her and she realized that she had indeed been chortling out loud.
She consciously cut off the sound with a clearing of her throat.
He seemed to read the doubt in her expression.
“It’s the only auto dealership in the Mall and this is the quickest way.”
“I’ve no doubt,” she snapped, tension in her lips.
“C’mon, Cora.”
Taking Lara by the hand, he assisted her and Cora down the last step, shining his flashlight down upon the floor to assure their footing.
“I should take Cora myself,” he said, going to one knee and reaching both hands out to her.
Cora shook her head emphatically and clung tighter to her mother’s arm.
Lara and Simon exchanged a look and he rose to his feet again.
“Okay, but if you don’t keep up, you’re going to have to let Mr. Simon carry you, ‘kay?”
Cora nodded and took Lara by the hand, her grip strong and resolute--just like the handshake of her father on a night long ago when they had first been introduced after that yawn-fest of a college seminar on the Depletion of the Ozone Layer.
Simon stepped around the escalator bank and pointed the flashlight down the west-facing platform.
It looked like a subway tube without the extra headway, Lara thought.
“Perhaps you should set the pace,” Simon said, shining the light, ahead of them.
“Don’t run.
That will just increase the risk of tripping.
We can make just as good time if we walk at a fast pace.”
“I agree,” Lara replied, starting forward and tugging Cora gently to her side.
“How far?”
“Less than a mile.
It shouldn’t take us more than thirty minutes to get there.”
“Didja hear that, Cora?” Lara chirped.
“We’re going to be with your brother in a half hour.”
Cora shined the beam of her flashlight across the walls at their sides.
“Mommy, what do you think got the Boogeyman?”
“Cora, we’re not going to tell stories like that down here.
You understand?”
The little girl craned her head to look back at the fading patch of sunlight spilling down from the escalator opening behind them.
In the silent stillness, the croak of her swallowing was clearly audible.
“Face forward and watch where you step!” Lara chastised, giving her daughter’s arm a gentle tug of correction.
“Mr. Simon, is the Mall alive?”
“Cora, what did I just tell you?”
Silence enveloped them up and a phantom shiver ran up Lara’s back and rattled her shoulders like a large playful dog.
“How about we sing a song?
‘What makes that little ole ant, think he can move that rubber tree…’”
Cora sighed heavily and snapped, “Mr. Simon, tell us a story.”
“What a good idea, Cora,” Lara replied, her voice forcing positivity.
“I’m sure Mr. Simon has a good memory for stories.”
Simon seemed to consider his options for a moment, before beginning:
“There once was a boy who loved to climb trees in his backyard.
He’d climb trees from sun up to sun down and his favorite game was seeing how high he could climb.
But the boy realized one day that he was very very lonely.
He asked his father if he could have a pet and his father being a good and loving father gave him a cat, a dog, a parrot, and many many other animals to play with.”
Lara looked from Cora to Simon.
This was exactly the sort of thing she had wanted but had no talent at.
She found herself thinking that Ben could have done no better and was instantly ashamed at the comparison.
“But the boy found that he was still lonely.
So he asked his father for a friend that was more like him than the other animals and since his father was a good and loving father, he found a little girl to be his friend.”
“The girl was a very good friend to the boy.
He showed her around his backyard and introduced her to all his pets.
They shared everything and had so much in common that it was as if they had been molded from the same piece of clay.
The girl loved to climb trees just as much as the boy and one day while they were playing in the yard, she saw a gigantic tree glowing bright green with life that had so many branches that it looked like an octopus reaching into the cloud-filled sky.
The girl ached to climb it and asked the boy if they could.
The boy told her that his father had told him that they could climb any tree in the yard but this giant green one.
‘The branches of this tree, the very first and the mother of all trees, reach so high into the sky that to fall from its heights means certain death,’ his father had told him.”