Dawn of the Dead (11 page)

“Whatda ya think?” he asked Peter, trepidatiously.

Peter just stared into the darkness and then back into the storage area.

“This is the only way up here,” Roger continued, his voice bouncing off the concrete walls, echoing in his ears. “Whatda ya think?”

Peter merely continued staring at the empty space. Then, as if he were alone, he turned and entered the main room, where Steve and Fran waited on pins and needles.

Roger stood for a moment on the landing, and then followed Peter into the main room. He couldn't figure him out, but at least he could rely on him for making the right decision.

Roger walked into the center of the room. As soon as he cleared the door, Peter appeared and slammed the stairway door closed, turning the flimsy lock. Then, without speaking to the other three, who stood by mutely waiting for orders, Peter started stacking the cartons against the door; a barricade against the unknown.

•  •  •

The group of refugees sat on the floor near the pyramid under the open skylight. They had attacked their cans of Spam with relish, and the empty tins littered the area. Stephen slept fitfully, his head in Fran's lap. Her hand was in his hair, and occasionally she patted him as one would a feverish child. This was the first real sleep he was able to have since they'd left Philadelphia.

Roger leaned against the pyramid watching Peter, who sat in the lotus position, his gun across his legs. For the past hour, Peter had not taken his eyes off the doorway to the suspicious stairwell. Infrequently, he and Roger still picked at the cans. Roger swilled water from an empty can that he had filled from one of the C.D. drums.

“You better get some sleep, too, buddy,” Roger cautioned, nodding toward Stephen.

“There's an awful lot of stuff down there that we could use, brother,” Peter said softly, allowing Roger into his thoughts for the first time that day.

“I know it.”

Fran's deceptive tranquillity at having her stomach filled and being out of immediate danger was shattered by the men's talk. Instantly, she realized that this wasn't a rest and recovery stop, but a mercenary raid.

“They're pretty spread out down there,” Peter continued. “It's a big place. I think we could outrun 'em.”

“Hit and run,” Roger agreed, unaware that Fran was now listening and getting increasingly angered.

“Hit and run . . . maybe grab us off a radio.”

Fran could stand it no longer. What was happening to them? Didn't they realize they would be no better than common criminals?

“You're crazy!” she blurted out. She extricated herself from the sleeping Steve and walked over to the two troopers.

“This place could be a gold mine,” Roger said, checking his weaponry and moving quickly toward the door, where he began to remove the carton barricade. “We gotta at least check it out.”

“This is exactly what we're trying to get away from,” Fran said to the still-seated Peter, who was checking his own guns. “Look what happened at the airport . . .”

“The only problem at the airport was stray bullets!” Peter told her belligerently. “We could outfight those dummies blindfolded.”

Fran ran over to Stephen and shook him, but the exhausted pilot was dead to the world.

“Leave him be,” Peter said, standing to his full height. “We're going ourselves.”

He bent over and snatched up Steve's rifle. He snapped off the safety and slammed a shell into the chamber and handed it to the woman.

“That's ready to shoot,” he said in a surprisingly gentle tone of voice. “Be careful.”

Fran held the gun as if it were about to explode.

“The trigger squeezes real easy, but the weapon'll kick you good when it fires,” Peter explained. “Be ready for that.”

“Wait a minute, I—”

“Anyone but us comes up them stairs, you guys take off in the machine. We'll try to make it out to the parkin' lot. You can pick us up there.”

Fran was speechless. She just stared at the man in total fright, with desperation in her eyes. She knew that the troopers had made up their minds and that her arguments would be useless.

“If we don't show up after a few minutes . . . we'll catch up to you some other time. You understand?”

His voice was toneless, and Fran sensed a greater meaning behind the words. She felt frozen to the spot and could only shake her head up and down like a little girl.

Roger and Peter, their faces set in stone, proceeded toward the fire stair. They pulled open the door on the top landing and were greeted by the same dimly lit corridor as before. They moved slowly out onto the landing and looked into the darkness below. Then, without looking back at the trembling figure of Fran poised at the doorway clutching her rifle, they moved slowly and silently down the steps. Suddenly, Peter stopped and turned back to Fran as if he'd forgotten to tell her something.

“You'll prob'ly hear some shooting,” he said to the frightened woman. “Just don't panic, OK?”

Fran could barely manage a sigh in return.

“You'll be all right. It's our asses that's in the fire.”

Fran stood on the landing until she could no longer see the men. She could still hear their footsteps padding down the narrow metal stairs.

Slowly, she turned around, the gun clutched in her arms as if it were her child. She shut the door behind her and locked it. Then, she struggled with a few of the heavier boxes and barricaded the door once again. She glanced at Stephen. How he was able to sleep throughout all this was beyond her. She just hoped that the two troopers would be back soon and that they all could get out of here for good.

By now, the two big men were two landings below the barricaded door. There was almost no light now from the single bulb two landings above. Roger clicked on his flashlight and shone the beam around. He saw that he was in a very small concrete space. The stairs went down no further and there was only one door. Peter eased down the steps behind him.

“This is the only way up there,” Roger told him when they were at the same level.

They opened the door slowly and discovered that they were in another cement-walled space that also seemed small, but was fully lit.

They stepped cautiously into the room and found themselves at the end of a very long, narrow hallway. Directly across from them were two open supply rooms. The rooms had the scent of cleaning solutions and ammonia. Buckets with huge wringers and stringy mops were lined up against a stationary sink and toilet.

Their eyes followed the one wall of the hallway, and they could see a dozen or so doorways, some open, some closed. Along the opposite wall, however, there was nothing.

The far end of the hall, about a hundred yards away, opened out onto the second story of the mall proper.

The two men looked at each other, feeling like intruders in so mundane a situation—the mazelike hallway of an office. They walked down the corridor, trying the first two doors, which were locked, and finally getting lucky with the third, which was wide open.

Roger ducked into the room with his rifle raised. It was a large administration office, with rows of desks that were fully equipped for a staff of secretaries and accountants. Papers were scattered all over and chairs overturned as if people had left in a hurry.

Peter continued to the next door, which was closed but unlocked. He swung open the door and silently jumped into a room that was much more spartan, with two metal desks and a few chairs. Several phones were arranged on a plain metal table. The green-gray furniture and lack of any discriminating features except for a few pinup pictures and a girly calendar suggested a maintenance office. On one wall was a large map of the mall, with pin flags and scribbling over an acetate that covered the drawing. At the other end of the room was a huge electrical panel with circuit breakers and an entire series of master controls all keyed by a number code to another map of the mall showing electrical installations.

On the wall behind Peter was a large blackboard and two metal cabinets. The open one contained all sorts of tools, both manual and electric. There were circuit testers, walkie-talkie units and several enormous rings containing hundreds of keys, which were also colored and number-coded.

“The keys to the kingdom,” Roger said in awe as he stepped behind Peter, who had grabbed one of the rings.

They scurried back into the hallway, two kids anxious to try a new toy. Roger picked up the keys and tried several in the doorknob of what looked like the corner office. The door opened onto a beautifully plush hallway, carpeted in deep rust pile with mahogany paneling leading to the executive suites, obviously the headquarters of the gigantic mall.

The labyrinth of interconnecting offices were all decorated in chrome and leather and highly polished wood. Peter and Roger wandered in and out finding themselves in the secretaries' anterooms and then ending up in connecting conference rooms. They would each take a different path and end up meeting each other again. The offices were all designer-decorated with huge paintings and sculptures and massive picture windows looking out to the woods beyond the parking lot.

The troopers finally reached a room that was not approachable through either the locked interior or corridor doors. The brass nameplate bore the inscription “C. J. Porter—President.”

Roger moved to the corridor, where he joined Peter. They were very near the end of the hall, and the brightly lit shopping area was visible, although they could only make out a small section.

They realized they were in the seat of power—but they didn't realize how much power. Porter was the president of Amalgamated Industries, and the shopping malls were only a tiny part of their clothing firms, fabric mills and department stores, which were spread across the nation. That he had chosen this gigantic out-of-the-way mall for his headquarters was only one example of the eccentricity of the brilliant, powerful billionaire.

The balcony on which Peter and Roger stood was railed off against the open drop to the first floor. Across the vast atrium below they could see the opposite balcony. On the far side, only two storefronts could be seen, and both were closed off by gates.

Just as if they were about to embark across a minefield in Southeast Asia, the two troopers realized the danger inherent in their actions. They looked at each other steadily and then moved forward, each clinging to the opposite walls in the corridor.

As they reached the mall proper, they slowly and carefully peered around their respective corners.

From their viewpoint, they could see that the upper balcony totally surrounded the vast interior of the building. At several points, bridges spanned from one side to the other. Almost as if they were in a marketplace, little shops of all types ran along the entire length of the balcony. At each end there was a spectacular arched entrance to a large department store, gates to the temples of plenty. Both stores—Porter's and Stacey's—were part, of course, of Amalgamated's empire.

Most of the stores were gated, but a few seemed open. The gates to Porter's, however, were barred and locked. Here and there tall trees reached up toward the skylights in the second-story ceiling, desperately searching for the natural light.

The living dead were conspicuous by their absence. None of them appeared on the upper balcony, although the men could sense their diabolical presence.

The troopers moved slowly and quietly to the railing and then crouched to peer down through the bars of the rail. Below, the sight was even more spectacular.

It was a wonderland of consumer's delights: stores of every type offered gaudy displays of items. There were clothing, appliances, photography equipment, audio and video outlets, even a sporting goods store with weapons in the window. Besides a modern supermarket, there were gourmet shops and natural organic food stores. A bookstore, record store, real estate agency, bank, novelty shop and gift shop were next. Each was shiny and new looking, begging the passing shopper to stop in and take a look. At each end—as in the upper concourse—like the main altars at the end of a cathedral, stood the mammoth two-story department stores, symbols of a consumer society.

The layout of the mall reminded Peter of the time that he was in Mexico, except that all the shops were outside rather than inside. Down the center of the polished marble floor were little stalls. This was the trading place of the peasants of the consumer society, those who couldn't afford the walls, but who were just as anxious to peddle their wares. Situated among the gardens and park benches were a tobacco specialist; a jewelry stall with imitation gold necklaces, rings and bracelets; a small photography portrait stall, where in happier times mothers took their scrubbed and crying children for their first picture. There were also restaurants and snack bars to feed the exhausted, tired and hungry shoppers and give them energy to buy more and more.

There was an arcade with coin-operated machines selling everything from children's toys to blood pressure readings. Upon a large turntable, designed to spin, but now still, a late model car was on exhibit. Other turntable displays showed futuristic household appliances, many way out of the range of the typical shopper. But, even though they were unable to purchase those time-saving devices, the people still liked to gawk and fantasize that one day they might be able to.

To Roger and Peter, who weren't usually ponderous thinkers, the familiar images appeared as an archaeological discovery, symbolizing the gods and customs of a civilization now gone.

But like any civilization, there were remnants, fossils that had been unearthed, and they trod lightly below in the aisles of the great cathedral. As the troopers, so removed now from any normal circumstances that their perspective had been distorted, moved toward their treasures, they were unaware that twenty pairs of vacantly staring eyes were watching them.

The two big men, in their military regalia, gazed out across the sprawling mall.