Authors: Bryant Delafosse
Instinctively, he called out with all his heart and soul to his mother with a love and longing that he hadn’t felt since before Cora had been born.
With that feeling, whatever had momentarily seized him retreated.
Glancing at the woman beside him, he saw her eyes flicker to him, a look of confusion passing over her face.
Then it was gone and the stern, determined expression returned.
Without another word, she reached out and took him by the hand, forcing Owen to stumble along after her.
Fifteen minutes later, they passed a single Bot, headed briskly in the same direction they were.
Ten minutes after that, Owen spotted another two facing the same direction, stepping just as lively as the first.
With a purpose, he decided.
As if they’ve been given a strong command.
Thirty minutes later several more appeared up ahead of them, and before long, a small group of five more marched in a staggered formation toward the entrance to the western leg of the Mall painted an obnoxious green.
The blood drained from Dugan’s face.
He backed away from the door, where the Bots continued their piercing wails. “What are those things doing?”
Cora felt the orange blossom of heat shoot through her brain, washing over the spot just above her eyelids.
She knew in an instant two things:
Owen was very angry, and someone was leading him here.
Beneath that initial fiery emotion, the five-year-old felt something sinister lying dormant as if in wait.
Something dark and malignant, like an animal resting on its haunches just within the shadows, eyes on its prey.
This impression was centered upon the individual traveling with Owen.
Digging deeper into her unconscious—akin to stepping back several paces to follow tracks--she found the ringing pain and shame of two slaps to his face, followed by a wrenching of the ear.
This told her all she needed to know about the relationship of Owen to the other.
Cora reached out and slowly gathered a handful of her mother’s sleeve.
Lara looked down, her eyes asking without words.
“Owen’s coming,” she stated.
“He’s not alone.”
Lara studied her daughter then looked immediately up at Chance, who was watching Cora with wide-eyes.
Her eyes narrowed.
Chance swallowed and lowered his eyes shamefully.
“W-What’s she saying?”
Lara stepped forward until she was face to face with the teen.
“Where did you last see my son?”
“The Mercedes sitting out in the middle of the red section,” Chance offered enthusiastically.
“About half way down.”
“Car,” Lara murmured under her breath.
Cora glanced up at her mother and puffed out her lips somewhat proudly.
“Toldja.”
Ignoring her, Lara glanced at the shopping cart loaded down with merchandise and the flatbed stacked with batteries, both resting next to Chance.
She reached out and ripped the capful of keys out of his hand.
“What is all this?”
“We’re going to start one of these up and drive it right through one of these windows.”
“Those won’t work,” she responded.
“Nothing that runs on batteries work.”
“Yeah, that’s the same thing your kid said, but that doesn’t explain the Bots.”
From his position at the door where several more Bots had gathered, Dugan thumped his fist threateningly against the doors at the siren-like scream each Bot emitted.
“I might excuse a teenaged boy but how does a grown man just let a ten-year-old child wander around a Mall the size of a city populated with homicidal robots?”
Dugan glanced over his shoulder, his eyes skipping over Chance and coming to rest on Lara.
“Pardon my French, ma’am, there’s no goddamn thing as a killer Bot. Every preschool aged kid from Tokyo to Austin knows that those machines would sooner go ass up than pluck a hair from your little girl’s head.”
“She’s right,” Chance interrupted, pulling down the neck of his T-shirt and revealing the bright red ring of skin.
“One of them tried to choke the life out of me.”
Rushing Chance, Dugan gave his neck the once over and turned to look over his shoulder at the group of ten Bots standing just outside.
Several of the sleek metal heads moved in smooth straight lines, tracing along the seams of the door and across the glass wall, eye sensors flickering hyper-kinetically, each searching independently for a structural weakness.
“They know they can’t get in.”
“For now,” Lara replied.
“But you hear that sound they’re making.
You know what they’re doing?
Calling others.
And when they get enough, they just might decide to push together as one mob and pop that glass like a soap bubble.”
Dugan licked his pale lips.
“We need to find out how they’ve been getting these cars inside and open it up.”
“But none of them will start,” Chance responded, glancing at the cap in Lara’s hand.
She tossed the cap back at him and turned away.
“Right now, we just need an exit plan,” he proclaimed, taking Chance by the arm and giving him a shove toward the customer lobby.
“Go see if you can get into the service area.”
“There’s no service bay in here,” Chance informed him, resting his forefinger on the display window.
“It’s across the parking lot.
Out there.”
As five more Bots joined the ten others outside, several of the units in front began to pound on the glass.
Eventually, the others joined in until the entire mob beat their metal fists upon the glass as one body.
Lara watched as the image behind the glass quivered with each reverberation.
Taking a quick look around the showroom, she saw that there were maybe ten vehicles of various sizes and body types below and a level of glass-walled offices surrounded by a railing above.
Immediately, she ruled out trapping herself on an upper level that had no back way out.
Taking Cora by the hand, she began to back deeper into the showroom.
She glanced around, chose a tank-like black Mercedes SUV and angled toward it.
Lara opened the door of the SUV and helped her up behind the wheel. “Now I want you to keep this door locked, Cora.
Do not open it for anyone but me.
If anything bad happens get down on the floorboard and don’t move.
Do you understand me?”
Cora gave a fearful nod.
“Mommy, where’s Simon?”
For a moment, Lara’s eyes detected movement on the dashboard.
Glancing up, she saw a small compass set into the dash just above the blank face of a digital clock.
The hand of the compass spun in wild loops around the four points.
Discounting it as simply strange, she turned her attention back to her daughter.
“I don’t know, Sweetpea,” she answered, planting a quick kiss on her nose, locking the door from the inside, and shutting her daughter safely within.
Glancing at the front show window one last time, Lara gasped.
Over the roofs of the vehicles, she could clearly see the body of a Bot above the others.
Stepping around the SUV, Lara could clearly see that one of the Bots had climbed upon the shoulders of several others and was proceeding to remove a metal grating that appeared to be used for ventilation above the door.
She had not noticed it before as it was easily twelve feet above the floor of the Mall.
Clasping her hands below her waist, she backed slowly toward the rear wall of the showroom.
“Please God,” she murmured, “if you exist, what more do you want from me?
From my children?
What?”
The grille dropped to the floor and a metallic arm reached through the opening.
On hands and knees, Chance crawled along one side of the wall below a large picture window that let out onto the parking lot outside.
Glancing over the nearly empty parking lot, he couldn’t help but notice a blood-red wave across the sky on the slowly darkening horizon.
Was that the aurora-borealis?
He’d heard on the Discovery channel about that sort of thing happening up north in Alaska and in Canada, but this far south?
Reaching the end of the wall, Chance turned the corner and spotted the edge of a small metal door built into the wall, nearly hidden beside a towering snack machine.
He wedged himself into the small space, and bracing himself between the wall and the machine, he used all the strength in his legs to push the machine aside and widen the space.
Coughing from the stirred-up dust, he managed to reach down and yank the door open.
Pasted on the inside was a step-by-step set of instructions.
In large red letters the following warning was posted: “Do not attempt to open without authorization from management.”
And just below that, “Both key card and physical key required to activate.”
Chance swore aloud.
“You find something, kid?” Dugan yelled from the opposite side of the room.
“Yeah,” he barked.
“Did you have a plan C?”
Dugan turned a slow circle, rushed over to the customer service lounge, set his gun on the table, and hefted one of the chairs up over his head and took a run at the window.
The chair bounced off the glass and flew ten feet backwards.
“So basically, your plan C was my plan A?”
Dugan shot him a warning glare, picked up the discarded chair and turned back to the window, this time taking a few more steps back.
Lara glanced around, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon.
She rushed over to an Emergency Roadside Kit display in the customer service area and snatched the large wrench that the mannequin held.
The Bot slid as lithely as a snake through the open grating hole and dropped like a stone onto the carpeted floor of the showroom.
At the sound, Dugan lowered the chair he held cocked at the display window and turned to look up front.
Chance shot one last look at Dugan before he bolted through the customer service department, leaped over a short glass case displaying Mercedes merchandise and dropped down behind it.