The Mall (25 page)

There was even some speculation that whoever had tried to dispose of the leg in question might have done away with the rest of the body previously in the same way they’d tried to get rid of the leg.
 
It was even possible, some debated, that the furnaces had been used by organized crime figures for months after the Mall first opened before stricter fail-safes had been added to the system.

Though he had prepared for the worst that night, Albert hadn’t faced anything as provocative as a severed body part.
 
The image the micro-Bot had sent back was a canvass bag filled with porn magazines and a couple of college text books.

Now, as he remembered the story of the disembodied leg, and its possible Mafia ties, Albert decided that he must have come down here for a specific reason.

The incinerator in front of him continued to burn intensely.
 
Even with all the heat proofing, the room was nearly unbearably hot.
 
The air was dense and hard to breath.

Albert pulled a welder’s mask and heavy gloves from the shelf and wheeled the flat-bed close to the nearest incinerator.
 
Donning the helmet and gloves, he reached down and gripped the handle of the pot-bellied iron door down at his knees.
 
Preparing himself for the blast of heat, he pushed against the bar and rolled the jaw-shaped door down on its track.
 
With a clunk, the door slid into place and locked open.

A wall of volcanically charged steam slammed into Albert, hard enough to rock his entire body a few steps backward.

“Son of a bitch,” he
bellowed,
his voice barely audible above the roar of the ravenously hungry flames contained behind the two-inch thick iron boiler plating.

Albert turned to the flat-bed and gathered the awkward package up in his arms, hoping to turn and fling the lifeless mass all at once, but something he glimpsed within arrested the action.

He saw a face.
 
It stared at him from the embers revealed in the narrow sliver of space between the belly of the furnace and the door.
 
The face wasn’t human in appearance.
 
Instead of a nose and chin, the creature seemed to have a snout within which Albert could clearly see teeth, enormous predatory in their length.

In that instant, Albert knew what he was witnessing.

It’s the dragon.

Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the face collapsed with the shifting of the embers and dissolved back into randomness.

Albert looked down at the body in his arms and realized that in his excitement and horror he had been holding it against his chest almost protectively.
 
With a blank expression, he tossed the bundle into the compartment, the black t-shirt landing at just the right angle to display that skull, grinning up at Albert mockingly.
 
He kicked the door shut with his boot, the jaw rolling back to slam closed like the gate of a castle.

Instead of walking away, Albert lingered there a moment longer, attempting to hear the beast as it fed on the flesh of the dead kid (
deactivated Bot
).

And after several patient moments, he imagined that he could.

“Lamia.”

Albert froze, staring down at the radio on his belt.

“Fulfill your function,” the radio squawked.

Slowly, Albert raised the radio to his lips and depressed the talk button.
 
“What is my function?”

Cora heard her mother’s voice say, “…too much excitement for one night.
 
I think she’ll be fine now that she’s resting.”
 
She opened her eyes and tried to make out where she was lying.
 
Oddly enough, she felt something soft beneath her, almost like a mattress.

In the dim light nearby cast by a flashlight, she could see two figures standing together, heads bowed conspiratorially and talking in low tones.

“Where’s Reggie?”

“I sent him out to find your son while you and Cora rested.”

“Do you really think he can?” Lara hissed, unable to disguise the hope in her voice.

“Yes, I do.”

“How?”

“He told me that he’s been hearing multiple sounds from various locations since the northern exit was sealed,” the other voice replied.
 
“With the quality of his auditory receivers, he’ll be able to target the source sufficiently to locate your son if he wants to be found.”

Cora watched as Lara reached out and grabbed Simon’s arm excitedly with one hand, even as the other pressed against her mouth, quaking with emotion.
 
“Thank you, Simon,” she managed in a shaky whisper.

“Mommy,” Cora managed, pulling herself up on her elbows and looking around at the covers she lay beneath.
 
“Where are we?”

Lara rushed over to the bed, a complete display model laid out in the center of the Home and Bath department of Sears.
 
Even the sheets and linens on the bed had smelled clean, though a little dusty from lack of use.

Yes, Lara thought with bitterness, Utopia does still have dust.

“How are you feeling, sweet pea?” she asked, feeling her daughter’s forehead with the back of her fingers.
 
It was warm to the touch.
 
“Do you have a headache?”

Cora stared at her mother.
 
“Are we still here?”

“You mean in the Mall?” she replied.
 
“Of course we
are,
hon.
 
We have to find your brother before we can leave.”

Cora’s face crumbled and she folded forward into her mother’s chest, sobbing plaintively.
 
“I don’t wanna be here anymore.
 
I want to go home,” she wailed.

Lara held her silently, glancing over at Simon, who was watching the interaction with an expression of great interest, his brows furrowed in what seemed deep concentration.

“How soon will we know something?” Lara asked him.

“Not long.”

Lara turned back to her daughter, ignoring the feeling of helplessness she felt in her gut.
 
She lay down beside her daughter, placing her chin on her arm playfully.
 
Cora peered at her suspiciously, her breathing evening out.
 
Eventually, she sniffed back the next wave of tears.
 
“S’okay, kid.
 
Reggie’s on the job.
 
He’s going to get your trouble-maker of a brother and then we’re going to get out of here, okay?”

Cora turned her head slightly and looked her mother in the eye with a serious expression.
 
“Somebody died.”

The phrase was such a non-sequitur that Lara was stricken momentarily mute.
 

“What dear?” she finally found voice enough to ask.

“I smell it.
 
It smells like copper.”

The child’s eyes were wide with anxiety, not a flicker of deception in them anywhere—not that Coraline was given to such performances—and it made the hair on Lara’s forearms stand on end.

“I think he saw it.
 
I believe he’s running now,” the little girl said very quickly, almost conspiratorially.
 
“He’s very
sceered
.
 
I know that much.”

“Who, hon?
 
Who’s running?”

“Owen.”

Lara studied her daughter, a pocket of suspicious fear lighting a pilot-light somewhere deep in her belly.
 
“How do you know this?”

“Because of the burning behind my eyes.”

Her anxiety increasing but compelled to follow the flow of logic to its conclusion, Lara pressed forward.
 
“Does the burning talk to you, Cora?”

The eyes of the five-year-old seemed to lose focus, almost as if she were looking within somewhere.
 
When the spark of her eyes reignited, she scooted her tiny body closer to her mother and drew herself up to her ear.
 
“It tells me without words.
 
I feel things.”

Lara pulled away and peered at Cora, needing to draw some reassurance from her appearance.
 
She looked to be the same normal little girl that had entered the Mall that afternoon, but she couldn’t deny that her daughter was unsettling her, fanning the flames of her anxiety.

“What kinds of feelings?”

“Strong feelings,” Cora told her, snuggling closer, pressing her face into the crook of Lara’s neck.
 
“Mad.
 
Sceered.
 
Bad.”

“I don’t
understand,
hon.
 
Who are you talking about?
 
Who’s bad?”

“Wicked like the green witch of Oz that set the straw man on fire.”
 
Cora pulled away and glanced up at her mother innocently.
 
“Except worse.
 
He’s real.
 
He’s here.”

Lara nodded and gently pushed Cora’s head back down to the pillow and pulled the edge of the blanket back up to her chest.
 
“Now I want you to rest, sweet pea, okay?” she told her soothingly.
 
“No worrying allowed.
 
Me
and Simon will do that for you.”

“Mommy, do you like Simon now?”

Lara gave an amused snort and tweaked her button nose.
 
“He’s growing on me.”

Satisfied with the answer, Cora gave a pleasant smile and rolled to her side.

Lara rose from the bed and went to Simon, who was standing outside the department at the foot of the frozen “down” escalator, peering into the darkened level below.
 
“Anything interesting?” she asked sarcastically.

Simon glanced at Lara with no sense that he recognized humor in her comment and gave a single shake of his head.
 
“It’s quiet.”

 
“You said earlier that you would know soon if Reggie found my son.
 
How exactly is he going to contact you if the network is down?”

“I’ll hear him,” Simon simply stated, continuing to stare down the escalator.

Lara glanced back at the Home and Bath section then settled her rump back against the corner of the escalator entrance, placing
herself
strategically in Simon’s line of sight.
 
“I don’t know of anyone who could have moved as fast as you did down there when she started screaming.”
 
She searched Simon’s enigmatic expression for some indication that he had heard and absorbed what she’d just said.
 
“How did you do that?
 
You ex-military or something?”

“No.”

“So, what are you?
 
Some kind of superman?
 
How were you able to do what you did?”

Simon remained stolid, his expression unchanged.

“I asked you a simple question,” Lara hissed at him between her teeth.
 
“At least have the courtesy to dignify me with a lie.”