Rotting zombies littered the mall parking lot—both alive and dead, though thankfully most seemed to be finally dead. We drove up to the access entrance around back, and Michael and I climbed from the truck, taking out the few zombies that were milling around the fence as if they were waiting for it to open so they could go to work. We pulled the fence out of the way, allowing Melanie to drive the truck through the opening, and we pulled it back closed behind her.
She shut the engine off and jumped out, her typical “keep the hell away from me” expression firmly planted on her bitchy little face.
“So, we piled a lot of the gear that we couldn’t take with us last time right by the entrance. But it’s still worth investigating other places,” Michael said seriously, walking toward the employee entrance. “This place was hardly touched, so there’s a lot of useful stuff.”
“Dead inside?” Melanie asked, pulling out two guns.
“Not anymore. There was a large group of them, but we got rid of them last time.” Michael looked at us both with a serious frown. “That being said, keep alert. There could be some trapped. I had one stumble out of a changing room last time.” He shook his head. “Scared the crap out of me.” He had the decency to smirk at that.
Michael was supposed to be the tough guy of the group—at least that was the image he liked to project to everyone: moody, broody, and untouchable—so it was nice to see a little humility from him.
“We’re staying tonight, right?” I replied, following him as he made his way to the door.
“Yeah, no point heading back now, we’ll be traveling in the dark. No sense in that. Shits dangerous enough out there.”
“Good, I’m ready for some food and shut-eye now,” I replied, rolling out my shoulders. My back was aching after being trapped in that truck for so many hours, my ears ringing from Melanie’s shrill voice.
“Stop being such a Polly pissy pants,” Melanie snapped, and stomped past me and Michael, her shoulder barging against mine. “There’s no real men in this world anymore.”
I had taken one step toward her retreating back, raising my knife, when Michael placed a hand on my chest.
“Don’t give her the satisfaction,” he said, and moved past me.
I knew he was right and I breathed out a heavy breath and followed them both to the door.
“No one else has been here since last time,” I noted with a frown. “Do you think that’s weird? I think it is.”
Michael looked around, but I couldn’t tell if he was frowning more than usual or just the same. His face generally just looked pissed off and irritated.
“No one had been here before us either,” he noted. But his voice held some concern.
Melanie rolled her eyes. “There just aren’t a lot of people left anymore,” she said dramatically.
I thought to the group at the roadside, the desperate measures they went to in order to steal people’s belongings. They murdered their own people, as well as others, for that crap. If there were places like this left untouched out there, then why did they go to the effort and loss and not just come here? It made no sense—unless there was more to them than we’d originally thought.
I stared hard at Michael, pouring my worries into him. He seemed to be thinking the same thing, but it was something we would have to consider some other time, when we weren’t right out in the open like this.
The door had been held closed with piles of bricks, the lock clearly busted out, and we moved the rubble out of the way and made our way inside. It was quiet, the darkness oppressing as we made our way down a long corridor without windows. I was tense; the journey had been long and hard, thanks to Melanie’s constant bitching and my own demons eating away at me. My katana was held firm in my grip as we came to the end of the first corridor and took a right, pushing open large double doors that led into the heart of the mall.
The roof was a dome made of glass, and the sunlight streamed in. The glass was all still intact, keeping the entire place airtight. Though cold in there, it was warmer than outside, and in the summer months, I bet it would be downright cozy.
The air was still and silent, and I looked around with another frown. Melanie moved straight off out into the open, a handgun in either palm. She cocked her head both left and right before she moved off to the left, passing the pile of gear that had been pre-gathered when Nina had been here. I took off to the right, still wary, but feeling more relaxed now with sunlight streaming in.
There was something about the dark in an apocalypse that freaked me out. Hell, it freaked everyone out. I had never been afraid of the dark, not even as a kid. All those times my father had locked me under the stairs for getting into trouble at school had taught me that there was nothing to fear in the dark but yourself. But after the apocalypse, there actually
was
something to fear in the dark: zombies. Those mean bastards thrived in the dark, and one wrong move could get you killed.
Everyone was afraid of the dark these days. The dark released its nightmares upon you.
Michael said this place should have been completely clear, but to be careful—and I couldn’t agree more. I had seen it happen one too many times: a zombie hidden away and taking everyone by surprise, turning a whole group before you could even blink. That wasn’t going to happen to me. If I was going to die, it was going to be somehow heroic. I had messed up every part of my life so far, and everyone else’s that I had touched; the least I could do was die doing something right. Maybe if I died being the man my father had said I could never be, just maybe it would make up for everything I had screwed up.
I carefully made my way from one end of the mall to the other, passing shops filled with useless items that held no meaning in this world anymore. It was hard to believe that this used to be what made the world go ’round—money and the crap you bought with it. I had never worked retail, but I had a girlfriend who once worked in a clothes store in one of these big malls. She had loved the staff discount, but hated the pretentious assholes she had to serve all day. People that looked down their noses at her because they could afford the latest trends and she couldn’t. People that stayed in five-thousand-dollar-a-night hotels and ate caviar like it was going out of fashion. People that thought they were better than everyone else. I’d hated people like that, which was how my hatred for the rich had begun. The stories that she had told me each day—how they had sneered at her or spoken down to her and there hadn’t been a damn thing I could do about it—that’s the part that frustrated me the most. I had been out of work at the time, scouting the jobs section every day, pounding the pavement, but there was nothing out there. And it killed me. I had wanted to tell her to tell them to stick their jobs up their fat asses, and that we didn’t need their money, but we depended on her salary to live.
One day a rich woman wearing a fur coat and a diamond necklace got caught shoplifting by my girlfriend. My girlfriend had told me how she had seen her shoving a silk scarf into her handbag, and when confronted about it, the woman had kicked up such a fuss that she had to be dragged into a back room. Apparently she had been one of the store’s best customers, and they didn’t want to lose her business. They’d let her off for her theft, and my girlfriend had lost her job for embarrassing the customer. The thing that pissed me off the most was the thought that this stupid rich bitch could’ve afford whatever the hell she’d wanted. She didn’t need to steal; she’d chosen to.
It had been the end of our relationship, and my girlfriend had moved back in with her parents a month later, leaving me with a large rent bill. I’d hated rich people even more from that day forward. They had ruined my life one way or another for as far back as I could remember.
I passed a jewelers and couldn’t stop myself from looking inside. It was, after all, part of my nature: I was a thief—or at least I had been at one time—and a damn good one too. I had started out working jewelers like this, stealing five-thousand-dollar watches and diamond necklaces from people as they left the stores, hoping that one day, one of the women I’d stolen from would be the one that had ruined my life. It was like getting my revenge for what had happened to me and my ex. As my skills grew and my name moved among the underground, I had quickly moved on to actually breaking in and taking things myself. It saved time, and besides, I was damn good at it.
Surely it would be criminal to ignore such a skill.
Like a magpie, my eyes instantly landed on all the feminine jewelry—diamond tennis bracelets, pearl necklaces, and emerald earrings, each of them worth more than an average blue-collar worker had earned in a year. There was nothing more attractive than seeing a woman naked, barring a diamond necklace draped between a set of heavy breasts. Nina would look beautiful in something like this, but there was not a chance she’d wear it. Maybe before the infection she would have loved such an item, but not now. Shaking free from my memories, I went on back to find the others.
I found Melanie inside an outdoor goods store, where she was trying on various boots. I looked down at my own boots, deciding a new pair was a good idea. My current ones were a mess—old and a size too small. It would be good to find boots that fit me for a change.
Melanie huffed, mumbling something incoherent under her breath, and I turned to frown at her.
She looked up at me with a scowl. “Is there a problem?”
I chuckled at her bitchiness and shrugged. I had to give it her: her insults were creative. And I would have told her so if I thought she’d accept the compliment. I turned back to the rows of mismatched boots and ignored her grumbling. They didn’t have the ones I wanted in my size, so I went to the back of the store and headed into the stockroom in the hopes of finding some there. The door had been busted in some time ago, the handle swinging uselessly, giving me the impression that the living had been here at one time or another.
It was dark with no lights on, and I propped the door open and began rummaging through shelves and shelves of boxes until I found the ones I wanted in the right size and carried them back into the main store where there was some light. I sat down, dragging my old stinking boots off my feet. They smelled so bad, even I grimaced and I threw them as far away from me as I could get them.
“Where did you get those?”
I looked up, eyeing Melanie and debating on whether to answer her or not. She was, after all, a bitch that had it in for me and didn’t deserve being treated as anything more.
“You two still fighting?” Michael said as he came into the store. He looked like he was finally relaxing, which would be a new one for him.
“Fuck off,” Melanie snapped.
Michael looked behind himself at the shelves of mismatched boots and then down at the matching ones I had. “Where did you get the boots?”
“Storeroom,” I replied without missing a beat. I looked over at Melanie and grinned. Yes, it was childish, but I didn’t care. She was a bitch, I was an asshole. We both knew our places, and I was happy to live up to my name.
“I fucking hate you,” she said as she stood up and stormed off, and I laughed as she cussed me out over her shoulder.
Michael laughed and followed her while I pulled off my graying socks that were all but stuck to my dry and blistered feet. I had grown used to the uncomfortableness of dry, cracked skin and blisters, but that didn’t mean I liked it. I snagged the socks off, threw them in the corner, and grabbed a clean pair from one of the racks. They were good, manly socks—thick yet soft—and I groaned a little as I slid them over my dirty feet.
“Damn,” I breathed out. A man could easily forget how good new socks felt. “God damn, that’s good.” I wiggled my toes, letting the soft wool press between them. Yeah, new socks rocked!
I slipped my new boots on and tied them tightly before I went to look around the store for what else I could change into. I was dirty and sweaty, my clothes old and threadbare, and they stank like they had never been washed. Which wasn’t actually true. I’m sure they had been washed at least once in the many months that I had been wearing them. It had been too long since I had bothered to change out of the stinking T-shirt and sweater I was currently wearing—another side effect of not being with Nina. She would tell me I stank and make me wash—not that I needed telling, of course. Because I knew when I stank, I just didn’t care enough to do anything about it. None of us really did anymore. Especially Michael. Christ, he stank all the time. He worked out more than anyone I knew, and the constant smell of sweat clung to him.
“You’re such an asshole. Go die somewhere,” Melanie yelled as she stormed out of the stock room carrying a new pair of boots. She glared as she passed me, leaving the store without as much as a goodbye or a “kiss my ass.”
A moment later and Michael came out grinning.
“What was that all about?” I asked, frowning. Michael tended to avoid confrontation. Though he never shied away from it, he wasn’t one to instigate it, either.
He shook his head, a grin still on his face. “Nothing. Come on, let’s go eat.”
I followed Michael out and we made our way through the empty mall. This place gave me the heebie-jeebies. It reminded me how I used to feel when I was just a common thief going into one of these places, feeling every set of eyes on me, all of them accusing and knowing what I was there to do. At least, that’s how my paranoia had made me feel. Wait, who was I kidding? I was still just a common thief, though now I had morals. Sort of. Well, mainly that there was just no reason to go around stealing stuff anymore, because money wasn’t worth shit anymore.
Either way, I could sense the eyes of people staring out from their storefronts, even if those people were actually just in my imagination. We headed to what used to be the food court, stepping over several dead bodies on the way. In the center of the mall there was a huge hole blown into the concrete, and dead bodies—those of the zombie variety, anyway—were scattered everywhere. Body parts were scattered across the broken marble floor—arms, legs, heads, you name it. I was glad to see that everything was totally dead, though, and nothing even twitched as we moved among the ruins.
The restaurants were set out in a large circle, with the tables and chairs in the center of them all. Most of the furniture had been knocked over at some point, and dried blood was smeared across the floor and furniture. The stench of the dead was long since gone. Even the smell of rotten food no longer lingered, and my stomach growled both hungrily and happily.
Right outside what used to be a crappy burger bar was a group of four chairs around one table. Michael gestured us over, dropping his backpack next to the table, and I did the same.
My eyes moved across the table as I realized that this had probably been where they had all sat when they’d come here the first time. It made me feel strange thinking that—almost like I was spying on someone else’s life.
I still remembered when I had gotten the stupid idea of going back home after I had first gotten away from the Forgotten. Memories had pulled me back to my old apartment, but as soon as I had stepped inside, I had known it had been a stupid mistake. It had been like being trapped inside a picture. Everything had stayed exactly the same as when I had left, as if stuck in time, back in the moment when I had first run from the zombies. I could almost hear the zombies outside my door, scraping and groaning, the people from the other apartments running and screaming, the children crying. All my clothes, my belongings—they didn’t feel like mine anymore. They were someone else’s, from someone else’s life. Not the Mikey I had become, the Mikey who had killed and done whatever it took to survive. Yet who I had been previously hadn’t been much better. At least now I felt at peace with who I was.
I hadn’t even stayed the night there, choosing to stay in one of my neighbors’ homes instead. I didn’t take any photos or any clothes when I’d left the next day. The items weren’t mine anymore, and I hadn’t wanted to take that person with me. That person—that Mikey—had been angry and hateful, wanting to make people pay for everything they had done, even if the only thing that they had done was have more than me. This new Mikey, while being a killer, wasn’t nearly as angry anymore. Because in this new world we were all equal, and that was all I had ever really wanted. I couldn’t hate the rich anymore, because they were more than likely all dead, since they were such arrogant pricks, and those that were still alive were suffering just like the rest of us now. In some ways, karma had played a magnificent trick on the world. She had spun her web and canceled out everything that singled people out. Color and creed didn’t matter, wealth and importance didn’t matter. The zombies ate us all.
In many ways it was like the world had a fresh slate to start again, though it was far from clean. This world would never be clean again—not until every zombie was dead.
But, I knew that I couldn’t be the angry Mikey from long ago, not when what I was angry about no longer existed in this world. I ran my hand over the top of a chair, wondering which one Nina had sat in, and then I shook my head when I realized that was actually an incredibly creepy thing to do. Great, new Mikey was a creepy bastard. Still, I guessed as long as I didn’t start wearing her underwear and talking to myself in the mirror, acting out nonexistent conversations with her, creepy Mikey wasn’t so bad.
“Whatsup?”
I glanced up and saw Michael watching me. “Nothing,” I said in a hurry. “Why? What’s up with you?” I arched an eyebrow.
He smiled. “You’re still pussy-whipped.”
Melanie scraped out a chair and opened her backpack, having found something to eat already. “You totally are,” she laughed, pouring a small sachet of salt inside one of her ration packs.
“No, I’m not,” I replied indignantly. “I was just thinking about shit, you know.” I looked across at Michael, who was still smiling.
“Thinking?” he said, his voice tinged with humor. “About what?”
“Nothing important. Just stuff,” I huffed, feeling completely pussy-whipped. Nina wouldn’t leave me; even this distance I’d put between us wasn’t far enough to get her out of my head. She was going to drive me insane at this rate, and she didn’t even realize it. She still thought I couldn’t give a shit about her, when the truth was I cared too much.
“Stuff?” Michael prompted with a smirk.
“Stuff and thangs,” Melanie said with longing in her voice. “Stuff and thangs.” She looked off into the distance.
Both Michael and I looked across at her and burst out laughing.
She shrugged and ducked her head, looking embarrassed. “Pussy-whipped asshole,” she grumbled in response to my staring. “You deserve her, she’s just as crazy about you. Like two peas from the same messed-up pod.”
That actually might have been the nicest thing she’d ever said to me. Or anyone. Though I was certain it was supposed to be an insult, it had been just the thing I needed to hear.
I smiled obnoxiously. “I didn’t know you cared so much.”
“I don’t,” she grumbled, and turned her back to me.
This apocalypse changed people. Melanie, I had to assume, was just like this: bitch, born and bred. I could deal with that. I could even work with it, so long as I knew she had my back when the shit hit the fan. I was yet to find out if that were true; however, she hadn’t made it this far, being this mean to people, without good reason. Besides, Michael seemed to trust her, and now I knew he hadn’t been after my girl, I was inclined to trust him.
Michael and I walked inside the burger bar. It didn’t smell anymore, which was good, but I guessed at one point the smell must have been incredibly bad. Rotten food filled the freezer, dead flies and maggots everywhere, all the food almost unrecognizable now from its original form, just piles of mush. Though it wasn’t hard to work out what it had once been, it certainly didn’t whet my appetite for lunch.
We shut the door to the freezer and made our way around the kitchen, opening up boxes and quickly jumping out of the way when we disturbed rats’ nests filled with tiny dead babies. I was glad they were dead, knowing for a fact that Michael would have been cooking them up on a fire if they weren’t. Thank God for small miracles.
I was pleased to see that there were tons of ketchup packets, though. Damn, I had missed ketchup. Almost as much as I had missed new socks. I grabbed a packet and tore open the top, squirting it into my mouth and then humming in pleasure before opening up a second packet.
It wasn’t a substantial meal by a long shot, but I could slurp down those little packets until my belly was filled, no problem.
“You’ll get the shits eating all of those,” Michael said as I tore open a fourth packet.
“It’ll be worth it,” I mumbled as I swallowed the flavorsome liquid down.
“No, it won’t.” he replied.
“Gimme a break, man.” I tore the top of another packet off with my teeth and squirted it down my throat. “I’ve missed this shit so much.”
I closed my eyes and said a small prayer of thanks. My feet were warm and comfy, and I had all the ketchup I could eat.
Today was a good day.