Dawn of the Dead (12 page)

“It's Christmastime down there, buddy,” Roger said with wonder.

“Fat city, brother. How we gonna work it?”

“We get into the department stores up here,” Roger plotted. “They prob'ly have their own escalators inside.”

“Let's check those keys,” Peter suggested.

At this point, the two troopers had a narrow-minded objective—get as many supplies as possible. Neither of them stopped to think about what would fit into the small helicopter, which barely held its human passengers. They greedily headed toward the administration corridor and moved quickly down the hall toward the maintenance office.

As they left the balcony, a zombie staggered out of one of the open stores several yards away from where they had been standing. It was followed by a second creature, a female without an arm. Steadily, menacingly, they moved along the balcony toward the open corridor.

In the maintenance office, the troopers compared the keys against the coded map on the wall.

“Seventy-two . . . U and D,” Roger called out as he pored over the map. “Here it is . . .”

He and Peter checked the keys and Peter found the corresponding numbers.

“Here,” he said, holding it out toward Roger.

“Let's hope it's right.”

“Look here,” Peter said, pointing to the map. “These numbers must all be locks. Front, side, back outside, must be like loading docks. But what are these?”

He pointed to several numbered spots that seemed to be within the big Porter's department store, which they were studying.

“Washroom?” Roger guessed. “Equipment? . . . I dunno.”

While Peter still stared at the map, Roger moved off toward the electrical control panel.

“I guess these gotta be the gates,” Peter surmised.

Roger wandered around the room cheerfully. He noted something on the control panel with a smile and turned toward Peter.

“How about a little music?”

“What?” Peter asked, totally taken aback by the frivolity of the statement.

The big trooper moved up behind his blond partner. One of the controls on the panel was marked “Music Tape.” The master switch was in the off position. Another switch was marked “Floor Exhibits” and a series of others were marked “ESCALATORS.” There were dozens of master switches, which were all in the off mode.

“Power switches,” Peter said to himself.

“The music might cover the noise we make,” Roger said practically.

“Hit 'em all,” Peter said magnanimously. “Might as well have power in everything. We might need it.”

With a gleam in his eye, Roger hit all the switches one at a time.

Throughout the mall, the dull, droning sound of Muzak poured out through the loudspeakers.

Upstairs, the curious sound reached a startled Fran. She snapped the rifle into her hands, ready to fire, but she couldn't stop her hands from shaking. She had been standing, one ear cocked to the strange music below, just inside the storage area. Now she stepped into the fire stair and tried to see through the darkness. The sounds of the insipid music drifted up toward her.

“Stephen,” she cried, leaning into the storage area again. “Stephen!”

His mind still fuzzy from his long-needed rest, Steve roused himself. At first he thought he had been dreaming about the music (which sounded unbelievably like what he used to hear in his dentist's office) and the frantic call of Fran's. He opened his eyes, and for a moment he couldn't place the big, cold room filled with cartons. Then he remembered and jumped up to find Fran.

He found her just inside the storage area, her eyes straining in the darkness, the rifle held to her breast. She looked so tiny in comparison to the big rifle, and she was shuddering with fear. Steve led her into the larger room and closed the door.

“Where the hell are those guys?” he asked, still half-asleep and rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is going on around here?”

Fran had calmed down sufficiently to try to explain what had transpired while Steve was asleep.

“You mean they're actually going to raid the department store? What do they expect to do with stuff from there?”

“That's just it,” she told him, a look of fear in her eyes. “It's as if they've lost all perspective. We just wanted to stop here for some food and rest, or so that's what I thought. But they act like they're on some kind of secret mission. I swear, they're acting like a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers!”

Steve reached over and pulled Fran close to him.

“Don't worry,” he told her in a voice that he hoped sounded calm. “They're not
that
crazy.”

“Then what are we going to do? They said if they didn't come back to leave without them . . . how long should we wait?” She collapsed in a heap, crying and shaking at the same time.

All Steve could do was hold her to him tightly. He knew that if he tried to explain anything, he would break down as well.

Meanwhile, on the first floor of the mall, it looked as if a giant hand had turned on its own special mechanical toy. Only it wasn't a toy—it was an entire shopping center. The automobile turntable started spinning; the great escalators began to move up and down. Two of the living dead, caught just starting up a stalled escalator, fell and rolled down as the mechanical steps began to move.

As if it were a carnival come alive, lights blinked on in the exhibits, mechanical window displays began their robotlike motions. The zombies, bothered by the Muzak, wandered about the floor in increased confusion. Some of them swatted ineffectually at the moving exhibits.

Disturbed by the movement, the tropical birds housed in the floor-to-ceiling cages woke up, chirping and squawking for their feed.

In a pet shop, puppies and kittens in a window display whined and scrambled over one another in fright at the noise, the motion and the tottering creatures.

All that was missing was the real-life action of human shoppers. On one of the floor exhibits, a rear-projection movie started.

A narrator spoke in a friendly voice: “. . . and for a price that anyone can afford, you can live in these luxurious new homes by Brandon. Fully electric, central air . . .”

The newly distracted zombies started strutting around at a quicker pace, bumping into each other and the moving displays. Some tried to return the way they'd come in, but they only bounced off the glass door. The one who had been circling endlessly had fallen to the ground, and his head was wedged between the ground and the door, preventing anyone else from entering or leaving.

In the maintenance office, the troopers readied themselves for their raid. Peter secured the vital key ring to his utility belt, and they moved out.

Roger's mind was a million miles away as he moved through the doorway and into the corridor. He was still lightheaded from the thought of all those wonderful goodies waiting for him downstairs. He was totally unprepared for his head-on meeting with one of the zombies from the balcony. Startled, he ducked back into the room. The zombie, blindly reaching out with clutching hands, rounded the corner and appeared in the doorway. With precision accuracy, Peter raised his gun and fired two shots cleanly through the creature's head.

On the top of the fire stair, Fran jumped as the sound of the shots reverberated through the enormous mall.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve screamed, grabbing the rifle from the petrified woman. “They're maniacs.”

He looked long and hard at Fran. He was torn between staying here with her and charging downstairs to see what was going on. Fran needed protection, but he also needed to prove to her, to himself, and to those two macho supermen downstairs that he could join the battle.

Fran saw the indecision in his eyes.

“Stephen, don't go down there,” she pleaded. “Stephen, please!”

“It's all right,” he said calmly, starting to make his way down the stairs.

In the corridor of the administration offices below, Roger and Peter were stepping over the corpse.

“What da ya think?” Roger asked as the second zombie, the armless female, came into his view. He fired his weapon and the creature fell in a heap. As if nothing had happened, he continued his conversation.

“Bag it or try for it?” he asked his comrade.

“You game?” Peter asked.

Roger nodded, and the two men ran down the hall toward the mall. With their rifles poised, they seemed like commandos on an important raid.

All that was missing was the blare of the trumpets as Roger and Peter charged into battle. The enemy wandered around the first floor, attracted by the sound but confused by the sudden intrusion of the noise into their quiet domain. In misguided, staggering strides, they walked this way and that, glazed, vacant eyes passing by the stores and shops with their glittering array of goodies.

Several of the zombies walked toward the escalators, which in their dormant state had been easy to negotiate. But now, the moving escalators tossed the zombies this way and that. Some of them tried going up the down escalators, while those few creatures who moved onto the up escalator fell against each other from the movement. They seemed like tumbling pins in a bowling alley.

One of the zombies that fell on the escalator was carried upward despite its awkward position. Another managed to keep its balance by holding onto the handrail.

And unbeknownst to Roger and Peter, several creatures had begun to move up the steps of a stationary stairway that ran from the first to the second floor and was located at the other end of the mall from the administration offices.

Meanwhile, a sweating, nervous Steve was cautiously making his way down the steps of the fire stair. His rifle ready, his palms dripping, he tried to control his jittery nerves. Fran looked anxiously from the top landing.

Several hundred yards away, Roger and Peter were barreling toward the huge gate that locked off the entrance to Porter's. The two troopers came to a crashing halt. Four or five zombies were staggering their way down a side concourse toward the troopers. They were about three hundred feet away.

Roger kept his rifle leveled off in the direction of the creatures while Peter tried the lock at the middle of the big roll gate.

Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead as he fumbled with the keys and finally found the proper one. When it sank with a click into the receptacle that was right at the floor and the tumbler turned successfully, Peter sighed in relief.

“All right!” he yelled to his friend.

Creeping toward them, however, was the creature that had fallen on the escalator. His ghoulish companion, the one who was able to ride the whole way without falling, was also approaching the two unsuspecting troopers.

Suddenly, to Roger's surprise, the head of the standing zombie became visible from Roger's perspective. He raised his gun and aimed for the creature's forehead.

Peter tried to lift the roll gate but it wouldn't move. It was still locked!

“You bastard,” Peter screamed in frustration.

“What?” Roger asked, his attention focused on the approaching ghouls.

“Still locked . . . on the side,” Peter said, pointing to another assembly. He moved to the far side of the gate. The same key fit, and Peter repeated the process.

But Roger could not share his joy. His attention was on the creature riding the escalator, almost near the top. Just as Roger was about to shoot, something caught his eye.

The fallen zombies, which up until now could not be seen behind the escalator railwall, suddenly came tumbling out onto the balcony floor.

A shaken Roger took fire, but his aim was inaccurate. The pressures were starting to build, and for one moment he stopped to think about the idiocy of what he was doing. That was his downfall, because it disturbed his concentration. His shot hit the standing zombie in the neck, tearing half the throat away. The creature was thrown off balance enough to lose its footing. It fell back down the escalator, but before it reached the bottom, it stopped rolling. The steps carried it back up toward the second floor again. It was still very much alive.

Two more creatures on the balcony struggled to stand. Roger watched them and then looked back over his shoulder. To his horror he saw that zombies from the side concourse were about a hundred and fifty feet away.

Working against time, Peter turned the key in the lock, but again the gate would not budge. It moved slightly, and Peter could see that it was free from the middle and far right mechanism, but that there was a third lock on the far left. He moved to it quickly.

As if they possessed some kind of primitive antennae, the other creatures on the first floor began to take note of the action upstairs, and they, too, started to move.

Zombies surrounded the troopers on all sides now. Those who had managed to climb the stationary stairway were now beginning to reach the second floor, but they were far down the main balcony. In order to reach the entrance to Porter's they would have to pass the administrative corridor.

Roger steadied his nerves and collected his thoughts. In the back of his mind he was wondering what the hell was taking Peter so damn long.

He fired his rifle again and one of the nearby zombies fell in a heap. His confidence restored, he looked around for more of the enemy to mow down.

“For God's sake, Stephen,” Fran called down the stairway upon hearing Roger's shot. “Let's get up on the roof . . .” she cried out to him desperately.

At the middle landing, Steve stared down into the darkness below. More gunfire could be heard from the mall. He was stuck: part of him wanted to run up to Fran and escape with her in the chopper. The other part wanted to go down and get into the action.

“It's all right,” he said, trying to convince himself as well. “Those things don't move fast enough to catch us.” The last part of his sentence was practically drowned out by the staccato beat of the gunfire.