Are we? Can we? Do we dare?
The automatic doors open with a pained hiss, pausing as if reluctant to allow us entry. Or escape.
Inside the mall, the foyer lights are bright, beautiful and searing. What is beyond the light? Is there anything? Are any of these stores really open?
Are we alone? Is it safer that way?
But no. I hear movement.
I crack a flare and throw it ahead, illuminating the dark stores beyond the welcome display.
Beside me, Maitland raises his crossbow and draws back the slide. He won't be caught out again.
Chloe adjusts her grip on the sword she made from a PS5.
"We'll find him," she whispers, to assure herself as much as the rest of us.
"They should be calling out bargains by now..." Maitland growls. "Where are they?"
"Maybe they've learned," Alex mutters from the back.
"God, I hope not," I say without thinking, and prepare another flare.
And then we hear it. The clash of shutters being rolled up. They are coming.
The hunters charge as a mass. The staff emerge from their hiding places and start hurling deeply discounted goods.
Chloe leads the way in a sprint for the safety of a pizza slice booth. No discounts there.
A crash of pans and a trainee leaps up, brandishing a bottle of garlic and herb sauce like the hunters are vampires. I can see her point.
"It's alright," I say, hands raised. "We're not here for you."
"Then what do you want?"
Behind us, the hunters smash their into a toy store. Five staffers are knocked aside trying to defend a display of Baby Yodas.
"This is worse than Cyber Monday '17," Maitland says with a shudder, adjusting his eyepatch.
I turn back to the trainee. "We have to get to the island. Do you know another way?"
She nods. "I can show you, if you can get me out."
"It's a..." I nearly say 'deal'. "I promise."
She leads the way to the back way, and tries the door. Nothing. "They must have changed the combination!"
Chloe unsheathes her PS5 sword and hacks the lock off.
"I always wanted to be a door buster." She smiles faintly. Nobody laughs.
"They heard that!" Alex calls back. Some of the hunters have turned our way.
Maitland grabs a salad bowl and wedges the door shut. It'll hold for a minute, maybe two. Time to run.
As they smash through one of the doors into an electronics wholesaler, we can see fires in the foyer, shopping carts loaded with anything and everything racing through the aisles, hunters sideswiping each other like charioteers.
This IS worse than Cyber Monday '17. Even '16.
The trainee gets too far ahead and hunters grab her. Chloe takes one's arm off and the rest back away. That one picks his arm up and demands a receipt.
A berserker bursts through the ranks, a Nespresso machine raised over his head. Maitland catches him in the side with a crossbow bolt, and he throws the coffee maker against the wall. Pods go everywhere.
I throw a flare and we push past as they recoil. We get up the ramp, trying not to think about why it feels sticky underfoot. The trainee finds the right door, Chloe hacks at the lock and I shoulder the way through.
All is quiet.
"Dan! Are you here?" Alex calls.
Nothing.
He calls out again. I want to hush him, sure the hunters will hear. But this is his brother.
"I'm here! I'm trapped!"
We rush through the aisles to find him caught under an overturned display of winter coats.
"What were you thinking?" Alex asks him as Maitland and I lift it off him.
"I... I knew I should have waited. But... the sole came off my shoe. Sometimes you can't wait for Black Friday."
Alex frowns for a moment, and then nods. "You're right. If we all thought like that, maybe none of this would have happened."
We look down at the foyer, at the fires and the fighting.
I look back. "Come on. Let's find a self-service checkout."
We make it out of River Island and few of the hunters trouble us. Chloe has to smack one upside the head as he goes for Dan's shoe box, but most of them withdraw as we show the receipts, and go back to chasing the ones holding Switch boxes.
The trainee goes with us as we head to the truck, asking for a ride. "Guess I already lost my overtime bonus," she says as she looks at the burning mall.
We drive off, away from the flames and the howls and the bargains. Maybe next year we'll follow Dan's example. It will cost a little more money... but save us so much more.
No comments:
Post a Comment